Our Book Shelf

Abstract

THIS work has been issued at a comparatively low price in the hope that it may be found useful both to science teachers and to all kinds of students. Children, we have, it on the authority of Mrs. Miller, with their keen interest in the facts of Nature and with their fresh undiftraeted minds full of curiosity about what is around them, are always found to take a deep interest in the wonderful, structure and functions of their own bodies. The subjects of anatomy and physiology have been introduced into many of the London Board Schpols and have been found wonderfully popular among children. An Inspector records that he has often been struc with the alacrity with which the children rush to their seats for an oral examination in physiology, even at the end of a long and tiring day of inspection. Truly, such children must be very desirous to know all about themselves, and for such no doubt such a volume as this would prove quite an acceptable gift. Nearly all the drawings represented in the plates are new—never before published in any form in England. Some of them are from Dr. Heitzmann's Atlas, others are drawn from preparations in the Vienna Museum of Antomy. In writing the letterpress the authoress had mainly in view the requirements of young students, and she has not assumed that any of her readers possess any knowledge of the subject. We are not disposed to be critical on a work published with such evidently good intentions. The physiological portions of the text are good, and if thoroughly taught to students and understood by them will place them far above the ordinary standpoint of the medical student of the day. The more purely anatomical descriptions would have been improved if written more for the plates than they have been. The plates themselves will be found extremely useful. We should have preferred that the amount of enlargement of the figures was always given; structures also like those figured at A on Plate xxiv. should be clearly defined as only diagrammatic representations, and a little greater attention to correctness of outline might fairly have been bestowed on the figures representing parts of the skeleton. The letterpress is accompanied by a pretty copious index to the plates, which might even still with advantage be greatly enlarged. This book in the hands of an intelligent teacher will be found most useful and instructive, and it may be made the text from which to preach many a most important practical lesson. Take the short paragraph headed Salivary Glands, how much human suffering might be avoided by a right comprehension of the facts therein stated.

An Atlas of Anatomy; or, Pictures of the Human Body, in Twenty-four Quarto Coloured Plates, comprising One Hundred Separate Figures.

With descriptive Letterpress by Mrs. Fenwick Miller., Member of the London School Board, &c. (London: Edward Stanford, 1879.)