402 BOOK NOTICES

The craze for notoriety, rather than the desire for truth, is only too well illustrated in the remarkable proposal made by McClure's magazine to the professor of ophthalmology in a western medical college, of which de­tails are given in the correspondence reproduced on page 405. An intelli­gent editor should be able to distin­guish between scientific theory which is open to argument and established scientific fact which is no longer de­batable among those who possess a reasonable amount of scientific educa­tion. It is laughable to suggest to a reputable ophthalmologist that he shall first undertake to answer a pronounce­ment by one irregular physician and shall then allow the dispute to be um­pired by a closing speaker whose knowledge and purposes are just as questionable as those of the first.

IV. H. C.

BOOK NOTICES Experimental Oogtuberculose en de

behandeling met sanocrysin. (Experimental ocular tuberculosis and treatment with sanocrysin). C. Winkler Prins, Jr. Paper, 88 pages, six plates (four in colors), and five charts. Amsterdam, Van Dishoeck te Bussum, 1928.

This is a thesis presented by its author as a candidate for the medical degree in the University of Amster­dam. It reports the effects of treat­ment with sanocrysin upon the ocular lesions of tuberculosis produced experi­mentally in the eyes of rabbits. In the majority of rabbits experimented upon the inoculation with tubercle bacilli proved fatal. Lesions of the anterior chamber or cornea were pro­duced in many, but the results of san­ocrysin treatment seemed negative.

The first chapter reviews the work on experimental ocular tuberculous lesions of the eye in rabbits, reported by previous observers. In this review justice is done to the observations of Finnoff and O'Rourke that have been reported in this journal. The color plates reproduce the appearances of

corneal lesions in four of the eyes. There are also four representations of microscopic sections of kidney and liver and cornea; and also stereoscopic plates of corneal lesions. E. J.

Der Glasblaserstar (Glassblower's cat­aract. Ernst Kraupa (Briinn). 119 pages, 24 illustrations in the text. Paper covers, 13.50 marks. Miinchen, J. F. Bergmann.

In spite of the existence of various regulations for the protection of glass-blowers from industrial disability, there had hitherto been no adequate scientific treatment of the questions involved. The present work is in­tended to supply this deficiency, and is the result of studies made by the author as ophthalmologist at Teplitz-Schonau, in the center of the Czecho-slovakian glass industry, where the author first described certain forms of destruction of the lens capsule due to exposure to the furnace. The draw­ings of the various types of cataract with which the volume is concerned are splendid pieces of work by Weran, a painter in Prague.

The author's chapter on the litera­ture of glassblower's cataract points out that the idea that fire is injurious to the human eye dates back to early popular experience, and was first made the subject of medical writings at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The numerous authorities quoted differ widely in their conception of the morphology, statistics, pathogenesis, and etiology of cataract formation, and agree only in the opinion that work at the fire does produce the injury. According to Hirschberg, glassblow­er's cataract resembles senile cataract.

Of the twenty-six cases described by the author, the opacities in the first fifteen involved only the posterior pole of the lens and did not affect the visual acuity, whereas in the remaining eleven cases the vision was diminished. However, the essential character of the two classes, that in which vision is not and that in which vision is affected, is the same. They represent different stages of the same process. From the