Abstract
THIS book should take a very creditable place amongst the smaller manuals of bacteriology which have appeared in recent years. The author has had considerable acquaintance both with the practice and the teaching of his subject, and he has formed just conclusions as to what he should include in his book, and what he should omit. He has included those methods and facts which it is essential for the student to know, with a sufficient amount of the abstract science to enable him to grasp methods and facts intelligently: he has omitted a great mass of scientific detail with which it is needless to burden the student at the outset. The book is thus of moderate compass; it is eminently practical, and its aims are directed to clinical medicine and hygiene in particular. The usual introductory chapters are short, but explicit and accurate. Perhaps the chemistry of bacteria and their products might have been accorded more space, in view of its increasing importance; but the subject of nitrification is well and clearly treated. Methods of cultivation and staining are so plainly put, that the volume becomes a sufficient handbook for laboratory work. The structure and mode of use of oil-immersion lenses is very properly described and illustrated by diagrams. A short chapter on immunity and antitoxins puts this difficult subject as lucidly before the student as the present state of knowledge permits. The principal pathogenic organisms are then described in detail in some 150 pages. The facts are well put, and appear up to date, though the order in which the different bacteria are dealt with is somewhat erratic. Thus Bacillus aerogenes capsulatus appears amongst pyogenic and septic organisms; while B. oedematis maligni, its closeally, appears nine chapters further on amongst the anaërobes. The enormous importance of streptococci in clinical medicine should, we think, have led to something more than their summary treatment in about four pages. The writer discusses the question of the “pseudo-diphtheria” bacillus at some length, and evidently inclines to the view that it may be only a modified diphtheria bacillus. Under the head of scarlet fever the views of the veterinary profession as to the nature of the so-called “Hendon disease” are adopted in preference to those of the Local Government Board experts and this without any adequate discussion of the facts: it would have been wiser, in a book of this sort, to omit the question altogether. In the concluding chapters Dr. Hewlett gives a short account of the bacteriology of water, air, and soil, and also of sewage, milk, &c, with a description of the chief methods employed. Antiseptics and disinfectants form the subject of another chapter, and the volume concludes with an account of antitoxins, vaccines, and other bacterial remedies. The illustrations are mostly reproductions of microphotographs, and are fairly good, though not unduly numerous. The book appears to us, on the whole, to be one of the best of the smaller manuals on bacteriology with which we are acquainted, and may be taken by the student as a trustworthy guide for laboratory work.
A Manual of Bacteriology, Clinical and Applied.
By Richard T. Hewlett, &c., Assistant in the Bacteriological Department, British Institute of Preventive Medicine. Pp. viii + 439. (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1898.)
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A Manual of Bacteriology, Clinical and Applied. Nature 59, 100 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/059100c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/059100c0