The Management of Obstetric Difficulties

are numerous references, mainly to American and German authorities and particularly to Dr. Whitridge Williams to whose influence the author makes acknowledgment. The book is wide in its scope. The first section deals with the problems of conception and the treatment of sterility. This is followed by a section on the diagnosis of pregnancy and its complications. Surgical emergencies and systematic diseases in pregnancy are given a well-deserved place, and are treated at greater length than in many textbooks of obstetrics. The main part of the book is devoted to the complications of labour and the puerperium. Operative technique is described in detail and the illustrations are excellent. Puerperal sepsis and the complications of the puerperium are treated briefly and reference is omitted to the later work on the aetiology and treatment of septic puerperal infections. The teaching differs little in the main from that of the British schools. An exception to this is the prejudice in favour of packing the uterus which the writer recommends not. only in the treatment of postpartum haemorrhage but as_ a prophylaxis against haemorrhage to be carried out in the course of Caesarean