Textbook of Medicine

THIS is a collection of five addresses previously delivered by Sir Thomas Lewis, with a preface. The convincing logic of his views and the precision with which they are expressed make one feel that the book should be in the hands of every teaching physician and every professor of physiology. It speaks volumes for the sane discriminating insight of the author that he can combine an address written as far back as 1920 with his present-day utterances. What he wrote in 1920 is as inspiring to-day as it was when he wrote it. The views put forward are as urgently in need of recognition to-day as they were when he delivered the address eighteen years ago. To quote one sentence alone: "The daily routine of the practitioner and the work of the special investigator . . . stand apart. You cannot deal with masses of patients by using refined methods; repeatedly it has been tried, it always breaks down. The chief weapons of the general practitioner are to-day, and will remain, his own unaided senses; these are supplemented by a few simple devices." In his second lecture he deplores, with much justification the "plethora of pseudo-scientific publications under the weight of which our library tables groan," and comments further that "records of imperfect and actually unsound work find an almost open path to the printing press; reports of purely repetitive work have reached an extraordinary and most undesirable magnitude." In the last of the five addresses of which this little book consists the author outlines in brief his concept of the type of mind pre-eminently suited for the teaching of medicine in a university, and broadly outlines the way in which he considers that medicine should be taught. His ideas might well be put before university bodies wvho are considering the appointment of such a professor.