Muir's Bacteriological Atlas

coloured plates 83. Price 15s. net. This work is intended for use in conjunction with a textbook on Bacteriology and Parasitology. The present edition includes twenty-six new coloured plates by Dr. van Rooyen, in addition to the illustrations contained in the first edition. Perhaps the most admirable feature of the atlas is that it is comprehensive and yet compact. The excellent illustrations should be helpful and stimulating to the undergraduate student; and their wide scope offers a book of reference to the postgraduate bacteriologist the usefulness of which is not likely to be exhausted by the first years of his experience. In this regard, special reference should be made to the sections dealing with the Spirochates. Rickettsia and Virus Diseases, Tropical Diseases, and the Pathogenic Fungi. A surprising amount of relevant information is compressed into the descriptions attached to each illustration. The book is well printed on good paper, and is handsomely bound. This book is intended primarily for students and those in general practice, rather than for the specialists, and is a kind of illustrated guide to ophthalmology rather than a textbook in the usual sense. It does not, therefore, make any claims to include every branch of this department of medicine. But what branches are included present clearly recognized teaching, which is at the same time modern in its outlook. The book is beautifully illustrated in a manner which serves admirably the purposes of instruction, although one might carp at the predominance of anatomical drawings in a students' textbook. Another point on which a reviewer might find room to criticize is a lack of balance between the commoner and the rarer diseases. For example, retitinis pigmentosa is deal with in almost the same number of words as angioid streaks, and fewer than the description given the somewhat rare condition of keratoconus. This lack of balance is rather disturbing to a student beginning the study of ophthalmology for the first time, and it is hoped that in the next edition, which will certainly be called for, that critical revision of this point will be given. The newly qualified doctor doing his first locum is often surprised to find that his waiting-room is filled, not with cases of disseminated sclerosis, aortic regurgitations, or cancer of the rectum, but with people suffering from coughs, colds, rheumatism, and vague gastric disorders which he can neither classify nor treat. To him Dr. Williams' …