Selected Subjects on the Surgery of Infancy and Childhood. Lettsomian Lectures for 1890

There is some picturesque writing and a good deal of sound surgery in the small volume before us. Tropes and figures abound. Thus (p. 5), "setting up inflammation in the surrounding structures, and rendering the skin adherent -and undermined, she (Nature) seeks relief from tension by carrying a lighted torch, as it were, among highly inflammable tissues." This process of " rendering the skin undermined" is then compared to what ought to have been in parallel language called " rendering the corn ignited " of the Philistines by Samson vivi-cremating the foxes. "Keen with the scalpel" (p. 11) may mean more than appears, but it seems rather vulgar. " Picturesque anatomical neighbourhood" (p. 15); "the pneumogastric nerve evinced its resentment by setting up an alarming attack of dyspnoea" (p. 17); "they, and the tissues with which they