A Course of Elementary Practical Physiology

Abstract

IN this little book Dr. Foster gives us the results of his experience in teaching physiology practically to students. As may be readily understood, such teaching is attended with much greater difficulties than those encountered in the experimental teaching of chemistry or of physics—difficulties which arise partly out of the complexity of the phenomena to be demonstrated, partly from the circumstance that experiments in which living processes are concerned cannot be repeated so frequently as would be desirable. Dr. Foster has himself been remarkably successful in overcoming these difficulties. The evidence of that success is to be found in the number of men whose names are already known as efficient workers in physiology, who owe to his teaching their first introduction to scientific research. On this ground, even more than on that of his long experience as a teacher, his opinion on the question of method is more worthy of attention than that of any other person. The book is entitled “A Handbook of Practical Physiology.” Our readers are probably not aware that during the last half-dozen years that term has acquired a special meaning. Under the term Practical Physiology all students of medicine are now required by the examining Boards to go through a course of laboratory instruction, for which accordingly arrangements are made in all medical schools. In very many instances the instruction is purely technical and anatomical. All that is attempted is to teach the student “how to work with the microscope,” which means for the most part how to prepare tissues for microscopical examination. The acquirement of this art, although, it need not be said, of great value to the physiologist, is not the end and purpose of physiological teaching. The physiologist interests himself only in what is living, and when he uses the microscope, concerns himself with the anatomical structure of a part or organ, only in relation to its living properties.

A Course of Elementary Practical Physiology.

By M. Foster, Fellow of and Prælector in Trinity College, Cambridge, assisted by J. N. Langley, B.A., St. John's College, Cambridge. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876.)