Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/429

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LITERARY NOTICES.

of America are in the Gulf of California, but pearls are also found in shells of the unio, mussel, common clam, and other shell-fish all over the United States. Within one year they have been sent to the New York market from nearly every State in the Union. One worth five hundred dollars was found in Wisconsin in 1889, and others ranging in value up to three hundred dollars have been found in Vermont, Ohio, Texas, and Tennessee. The archæologist will be especially interested in the chapter on aboriginal lapidarian work in North America, and the general reader will obtain much welcome information from the concluding chapter dealing with imports, values, cutting of diamonds and other stones, mineral collections, and uses of precious and ornamental stones for silver articles and furniture and for interior house decoration. Mr. Kunz was eminently well fitted to produce this work, as he is the gem expert for Messrs. Tiffany & Co., has prepared several reports on the precious stones of the United States for the Geological Survey, and is the special agent in charge of this subject for the census of 1890. The magnificent plates showing all the important stones in their natural colors are the work of Messrs. Prang & Co., of Boston. The many other engravings show articles of aboriginal production, forms of crystals, etc. The book is of standard scientific value, giving as it does the mineralogical characters and chemical analyses of the stones treated, and its handsome form makes it worthy a place in the finest library.

Food in Health and Disease. By J. Burnet Yeo, M. D., F. R. C. P. Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co. Pp. 583.

No one who examines this book can fail to be astonished at the amount of information that is here compressed within the limits of a small volume. Of course, the author has not put all that is known about dietetics between its covers, but he has gone over the ground with remarkable thoroughness. He describes the preparation, cooking, and preserving of food, tells the chemical composition and the special value of each of the common articles of food, the proper food for the individual at each period of life, from infancy to advanced age, tells how large numbers of persons may be fed cheaply and well, as in prisons, camps, and on board ship, and gives dietaries for all the principal diseases. "I have thought it desirable," says Dr. Yeo in his preface, "to enter fully and in detail into the important subjects of army and prison dietaries, school dietaries, and feeding during the critical period of infancy and childhood. In connection with the first of these subjects I have been at pains to present as fully as possible the admirable system of feeding our soldiers at home stations, so ably devised and carried out by Colonel C. J. Burnett—a system which may serve as a model of wholesome, economical, and intelligent feeding." Dr. Yeo gives a warning against the tendency to overfeeding in adults, especially those who habitually make little physical exertion. The habit of drinking milk with the meals is one way in which the proper amount of food may be exceeded inadvertently. In the part of the volume devoted to food in disease, besides general directions applicable to different diseases, there are given various "cures" known by the names of their originators. An appendix contains tables of hospital dietaries, and another contains a list of select recipes for invalids' dietary.

A New Medical Dictionary. By George M. Gould, M. D. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 519. Price, $3.25.

The aim and scope of this work can be best told by quoting from the preface. The author's purpose has been "to include those new words and phrases created during the past ten years—a period rich in coinages—which appeared destined to continuous usage. ... To frame all definitions by the direct aid of new, standard, and authoritative textbooks, instead of making a patchwork of mechanical copying from older vocabularies. While neglecting nothing of positive value, to omit obsolete words and those not pertinent to medicine except in a remote or factitious sense. To make a volume that will answer the needs of the medical student and busy practitioner, not only by its compactness of arrangement and conciseness of definitions, but also by its convenience of size and price." A notable feature of the work is its many tables, which comprise abbreviations, affixes, arteries, bacilli, ganglia, leucomaines, micrococci, muscles, nerves, plex-