In conclusion, I would say do not neglect an opportunity to subscribe to so excellent a work.

FITFH AND SIXTH ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH AND VITAL STATISTICS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA. Transmitted to the Governor December, 1889-90. 8vo, cloth and paper, pp. 634 and 740. Edwin K. Meyers, State Printer, Harrisburg, Pa. We desire to acknowledge our indebtedness to Dr. Benjamin Lee, Secretary of the State Board of Health of Pennsylvania, for these two very excellent and handsome volumes, the fifth report being handsomely bound in blue cloth, the sixth in paper. While the first is the more attractive externally, yet we are glad enough to get either and in any readable shape whatever-it is the inside kernel, the grains of solid facts, the elaborate special reports, papers, and tables of vital statistics, that makes them especially valuable to the sanitarian, the hygienist, the physician, and the political economist, who by the means of such reports, etc., are enabled to materially benefit their people by sound, intelligent, and practical advice. Day by day local, municipal, county, and State boards of health are assuming more and more the important station they justly demand, and we sincerely hope that the day is not far distant when every State will have its State Board of Health, or Medical Director of Health, each one as well organized as the grand old Commonwealth established by that noble old Quaker, scientist, divine, and political economist from whom it takes its name, and that each one will be able annually to send out like valuable reports, thus interesting their people in the grand questions of public health, the whole surmounted by the key-stone of the arch, a SECRETARY OF PUBLIC HEALTH, a member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States, with his assistant secretaries, clerks, and subordinates as other Cabinet officers of other departments that are of no greater importance. Furthermore, we cannot but feel a little chagrined that the penny-wise and pound-foolish parsimony of the legislative department of our own grand old Volunteer State has precluded the possibility of our own excellent and practical State Board for so many years getting out just such practical and valuable public documents annually. Well, it is to be hoped that this state of things will not last much longer-the

light is breaking in the east, and we soon hope to see it pervade our entire continent to its extreme western confines and from the lakes to the gulf. The Monthly Bulletin of our State Board, while doing much, indeed, to enlighten our people on the important questions of sanitation, should be supplemented by an annual report, which could not but prove valuable with so able a board to formulate and so efficient a Secretary to compile and edit.

The composition of the Board of Pennsylvania, we find from the sixth annual report, is as follows: Prof. George G. Groff, M.D., of Lewisburg, President; Benjamin Lee, M.D., of Philadelphia, Secretary; and Pemberton Dudley, M.D., Joseph Edwards, M.D., Howard Murphy, C.E., of Philadelphia; J. H. McClelland, M.D., of Pittsburgh; and Hon. Samuel T. Davis, M.D., of Lancaster, members.

The Bureau of Registration of Vital Statistics is composed of the Department of Internal Affairs, with office at the State Capitol, Harrisburg; Dr. Benjamin Lee being the State Superintendent of Registration of Vital Statistics.

We regret that time and space will not permit a more extended review of these excellent volumes at this time, but conclude with the positive statement that they are most interesting indeed, from the report of the meetings of the board to the very full and complete index. Quite a number of valuable maps and charts are to be found in each volume, in addition to the valuable reports of local and county boards and special reporters.

BACTERIOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS: TABULAR AIDS FOR USE IN PRACTICAL WORK. JAMES EISENBERG, Ph.D., M.D., Vienna; Translated and Augmented, with permission of the author, from the Second German Edition, by NORVAL H. PIERCE, M.D., Surgeon to the Out-Door Deprrtment of Michael Reese Hospital; Assistant to Surgical Clinic, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago, Ill. Octavo, Cloth, pp 184, price $1,50. The F. A. Davis Co., 1231 Filbert Street, Philadelphia, Publishers. 1892.

Dr. Eisenberg holds rank as one of the most prominent and advanced students of the world-renowned Koch, and as a token of respect dedicates his eminently practical series of tables to this great teacher and investigator.

The book is arranged in a series of well-prepared tables, in

which will be found the following facts in regard to bacteria and all forms of germ-life, instructively and practically arranged: Place found, form and arrangement, motility, growth in the various forms of media, temperature, rapidity of growth, spore formation, aerobiosis, gas production, gelatin reaction, and pathogenesis.

He first considers non-pathogenic bacteria, liquifying gelatin and not liquifying gelatin; then the pathogenic bacteria, cultivated outside the animal body and not cultivated outside the animal body; and, third, fungi. In regard to the latter, he gives the place found, color of growth, mycel arrangement, fructification organs, growth, temperature, examination methods, and pathogenesis.

One hundred and thirty-eight micro-organisms are considered, and it will afford to the student and investigator in bacteriology most valuable and important assistance.

The work of the translator is evidently done in a satisfactory and efficient manner.

A DICTIONARY OF TREATMENT, OR THERAPEUTIC INDEX, including Medical and Surgical Therapeutics. By WILLIAM WHITLA, M.D., Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the Queen's College Belfast. Revised and adapted to the Pharmacopoeia of the United States. In one octavo volume of 917 pages. Cloth, $4,00 Philadelphia, Lea Brothers & Co., 1892.

It would be difficult to conceive of a work more directly serviceable to the practitioner. Within the compass of 900 pages it details the treatment of all diseases, arranging them alphabetically for instant reference. A compendious index adds further to the convenience of the volume. Its purpose being to convey full information for the cure of disease, all the most approved measures, medicinal and non-medicinal, including electricity, massage, baths, surgery, etc., etc., are placed at the immediate command of the reader. The author is already widely known as an author, teacher, and practitioner, and he has here furnished a volume which should occupy a position on the officetable of every physician and surgeon. It will afford a most valuable means for quick and ready reference when time is not opportune for reference to more voluminous works.

BY J. W. PENN, M.D., OF HUMBOLDT, TENN.,
President Tennessee State Medical Society.

In accordance with a custom, now time honored in this body, I, as your retiring President, have prepared a short address which I trust may prove both interesting and instructive, or, to say the least, may suggest some thoughts of scientific interest.

The subject chosen for this occasion is the "Science of Life." At the threshold of its discussion we are naturally led to inquire, What is life? Is it an entity, a principle, or simply a state of organic matter? Of one thing we are certain, it is that

*Annual Address of the President, delivered at the fifty-ninth annual meeting of The Tennessee State Medical Society, at Knoxville, Tenn., Tuesday, April 12, 1892.

happy condition which all living beings, vegetable or animal, either unconsciously, instinctively or intelligently strive to preserve and perpetuate.

Life, in the broadest sense of the term, applies to every order, species, variety, and individual, thing, or being which has within itself functional activity of its molecules and organisms, kept in operation by the vis vitæ, including germination, growth and reproduction, in accordance with the immutable law of the unchangeable Author of Life.

We might inquire how life originated on this terrestrial sphere, even in its lowest form; we might strive ever so earnestly, and patiently, and laboriously, if you please, to acquaint ourselves with the modus operandi of the agencies employed to develop that complex process in living organic matter which is denominated life, with necessarily only negative results.

Why is this true?

One individual might answer the question in one way, and another, in a way entirely different; a third, a fourth, and on and on to an indefinite number, all differing in theory, according to individual pecularity; each simply reasoning from his own standpoint, according to his mental calibre and the light which he might possess. Yet the inquiry would amount to nothing more nor less than mere speculation.

We must deal with life, then, as a fact. For practical, or even scientific purposes it matters not to us how it originated. Or, in other words, we need not be concerned because we cannot explain or understand, or even-so far as we have any means of assertaining so much as conceive of the precise manner in which the Divine Author and Giver of Life employed the means by which it was first established.

Nor can we, by inquiry of the most painstaking, patient, and scientific character, obtain a knowledge of the agencies employed, or the order of their arrangement, by which the first forms of life were produced.

Therefore, we deal with life as it is, and, doubtless, there has has been no change in its various forms, or in the different orders and species of living things and beings in the world, since they were created, except such as have been wrought by climate, habit, and what we term culture. Doubtless all forms of life