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Reviews and Notices of Books.On Diseases of the Stomach: the varieties of Dyspepsia-their

)iHo;.’i.s’ cwd 7’?-ca/;’’n. By S. 0. HABERSHox, 1I.D.Lond., F.R.C.P.; Physician to Guy’s Hospital; Lectureron Materia Medica and Therapeutics at Guy’s, &c. Lon-don : Robert Hardwicke.

DR. HABERsHox is sufficiently well-known as a pathologicalobserver and writer on diseases of the abdomen to make

any detailed notice of his present work unnecessary. Ittreats exclusively of diseases of the stomach and the variousforms of dyspepsia. Dyspeptic diseases are, something likeskin diseases, very difficult of description and of differentia-tion. When we meet with a troublesome case of dyspepsiain practice and go to the books for light on it, it is apt tobe very difficult of identification with any of the merely literaryforms of the disease. But Dr. Habershon has succeeded in

giving a very useful description of most varieties of the

malady, and in practically distinguishing them one from

another. He does not trouble the reader with details from his

pathological materials, but his book is one that could havebeen written only by a physician who has seen a large amountof disease in the living, and carefully checked his conclusionsby making good use of large opportunities for post-mortem

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observation. The book opens with a chapter on Digestion atDifferent Periods of Life. Then follows one on the General

Sympathy of the Stomach. The third, fourth, and fifth

chapters treat generally of Symptomatology and Treatment ofDiseases of the Stomach ; and the successive chapters- downto the last, the eighteenth-discuss the particular forms ofDyspepsia and diseases. We think the classification of dys-pepsia as good as any we have yet seen-atonic dyspepsia,dyspepsia from congestion, inflammatory dyspepsia, hepaticdyspepsia, rheumatic and gouty dyspepsia, renal dyspepsia,sympathetic dyspepsia, &c. Degeneration of the stomach-atrophy, fatty wasting, lardaceous disease, fibroid degenera-tion, ulcer, cancer, &c.There is an occasional literary carelessness in the text which

would scarely be worth notice if it did not sometimes slightlyaffect the clearness with which the author’s meaning is con-veyed. But the work as a whole is a very excellent one. Itis all the better for being small. It should be read throughonce, and thereafter will be found a useful book admitting ofready reference in cases of stomach ailment or disease. It iswell based on sound and suggestive physiology, and on extensivepathological observation, and in the therapeutical departmentis simple, practical, and discriminating.

Change of Air, Change of Scene, and Disease. By J. C.ATKINSON, M.D. Fcap. Svo. Trubner and Co.

THE public are apt to confound the therapeutics of change ofair with those of change of scene, and even amongst medical menthere is often confusion of tongues when these two importantelements of cure are under consideration. There is, nevertheless,as wide a therapeutical difference between these two elementsof cure as there is a chemical difference between carbon and

oxygen in carbonic acid, and hydrogen and oxygen in water.We notice therefore with satisfaction an attempt by Dr. Atkin-son to show the value of the two very distinct remedial mea-

sures, change of air and change of scene. In a well-written

treatise, scientific yet plain, the author shows that change ofscene anywhere may be and usually is of service for that ail-ment of body which comes from overwork of mind, and whichone of our moderns calls "the disease atra cura /’ but thatchange of air has no general application in the treatment ofdisease, and that, ignorantly and injudiciously prescribed, itis as often pernicious as useful. Upon what, then, does thedecided influence of change of air, whether for good or for evil,

depend ? According to Dr. Atkinson, the influence is simplythat of atmospheric pressure. Reduction of atmospheric pres.sure, he urges, quickens the respiration and circulation, favourselimination, and so induces waste; hence the appetite andvigour of the healthy mountaineer. Increased pressure, onthe other hand, conserves the material of the body and checkswaste. Following this argument, he opposes altogether thetransference of consumptive wasting patients to elevated andso-called bracing localities, and insists that antagonistic actionis what is wanted to stay the rapid confluence of symptoms inthat fatal malady, and not pure air. The theory is bold, andperhaps not unworthy of consideration; it has many facts,however, opposed to it, and has not yet sufficient data in itsfavour to warrant our unqualified acceptance of it.

Historical Sketch of the Edinburgh Anatomical School. ByJohn STRUTHERS, M.D. Edin., Fellow of the Royal Collegeof Surgeons of Edinburgh ; Professor of Anatomy in theUniversity of Aberdeen ; late Lecturer on Anatomy, Edin-burgh. Maclachlan and Stewart.

’, DR. STRUTHEES has expanded into a thin octavo the lecturewhich he originally delivered before the Royal College of Sur-geons of Edinburgh on the history of the Anatomical Schoolin that city. Interesting in a professional aspect, it is highlyso in an antiquarian one, as enabling the young student torealise the difficulties under which the study of anatomy hasin former years been prosecuted, and also to estimate arighthis obligations to those teachers and men of science to whomhe owes the facilitated conditions under which he now pursueshis studies. The brief biographical sketches of the great Edin-burgh anatomists, from Alexander Monro the first to Dr.Robert Knox, are rendered by Dr. Struthers not only instruc.tive but entertaining ; while the valuable notes he has accu-mulated in his volume show him to have the true academical

mind, which, though fully and wisely in sympathy with thepresent, is also gratefully and reverentially appreciative ofthe past.

YELLOW FEVER AND SMALL-POX INTHE NAVY.

DR. MACKAY’s report on the Health of the Navy, which wenoticed last week, gives the particulars of severe outbreaks ofyellow fever on board vessels belonging to the West Africansquadron during the latter part of 1865, and of an epidemicof small-pox on board the Octavia, attached to the Cape ofGood Hope and East Indian squadron.Fever prevailed very extensively at Sierra Leone during the

Michaelmas quarter of 1865, and is said to have occasioned amortality among the European population of about 27 per cent.H.M. receiving-ship Isis, moored about 200 yards from thelanding-place at Free Town, with a mixed complement of

Europeans and Kroomen on board, also suffered much at thesame time from fever, chiefly of the remittent type, which wasfatal only to the ship’s steward, who died on the 28th Sep-tember with concluding symptoms of yellow fever. Thence-

forward almost every new arrival on board the his wasstricken with fever, which in most cases proved fatal, until inJanuary positive instructions were issued that no fresh arrivalsfrom England or supernumeraries of any kind were to be re.ceived on board, and all communication between the Isis andother vessels of the squadron was interdicted.Unfortunately too much mischief had been done ad interiot,

the fever poison having been transferred directly from the Isisto the ships Bristol and RCLttlesnake.The Bristol arrived on the station, and anchored at Cape

Sierra Leone on or about Christmas-day, 1865. It havingbeen considered probable that the continuance of fever on

board the Isis was due to that vessel’s proximity to the shore,it was determined to move her to another part of the harbour;