Abstract
WHEN this work first appeared, now more than seven years ago, it at once became our favourite handbook of physiology, and it has ever since been our constant companion. Perhaps the chief reason why it so especially commended itself to us was the fact that it served as the clearest and best exponent of what may be called the radical school of physiology. Its general arrangement differed altogether from that of most modern text-books. It entirely threw on one side that division into “functions” (function of respiration, function of digestion, and the like) which, after all, does not lessen much the labour of fhe author, and certainly leads the student astray, throwing, as it does, into the background, or even completely hiding, the essential oneness and solidarity of the animal body, and bringing the learner to regard the organism as a bundle of “functions,” one of which might easily be pulled away without much harm being done. The leading idea of the book was to follow out as closely as possible the doctrine of the conservation of energy. That idea was kept steadily in view throughout the volume, and faithfully adhered to.
Grundriss der Physiologie des Menschen.
Von Prof. Dr. L. Hermann. Dritte gänzlich umgearbeitete Auflage. 1870. (Berlin: Hirschwald. London: Williams and Norgate.)
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F., M. Grundriss der Physiologie des Menschen. Nature 2, 139 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/002139a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/002139a0