Diseases of the Tongue

attempt to revive one nearly half a century old. Those who can remember the personality of Sir Henry Butlin, his clinical teaching and skilful operating and the scholarship which characterised the old book will welcome the decision they arrived at. namely, that there could be no better foundation for a new edition. The skeleton of the book remains the same, but the substance has been altered to bring it more into focus with modern conceptions of disease. The earlier chapters remain much as before, the importance of oral hygiene and oral sepsis are now better understood and guarded against, syphilis is now so well controlled that late and advanced lesions are rarely seen, oral tuberculosis has become a rarity and for these conditions improved methods of general treatment and diathermy have replaced excision. In its descriptions and illustrations of rare and unusual conditions this book is still, as formerly, a mine of exact and exhaustive information. Concerning the aetiology of cancer we are little wiser than we were in Butlin's days and for leucoplakia and benign ulcers his methods of excision remain still the best. But when we reach the treatment of carcinoma the book has had to be entirely rewritten. Excisional methods have been relegated to a chapter headed " The earlier surgery of the tongue ", with its best results as cited above, and there follows a series of beautifully illustrated chapters on the modern technique of radium treatment. Mr. Cade is emphatic in his recommendation to extract all the teeth and allow the wounds to heal before proceeding to irradiation, and the superiority