Announcing the publication of BANCROFT'S Applied Colloid Chemistry By WILDER D. BANCROFT, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Cornell University. 345 pages, 51⁄2 x 8, illustrated, $3.00. A deductive treatment of the general theory of colloid chemistry. Professor Bancroft's wide information on this subject gives the book a special authoritativeness. It is intended that this volume will be followed by others on such subjects as paints and varnishes, plastics, fibers and dyeing, photochemistry, foods and beverages, etc. Chapter Headings I. Adsorption of Gas or Vapor by Solid. II. Adsorption of Vapor by Liquid and of Liquid and Solid by Solid and Liquid. III. Adsorption from Solution. IV. Surface Tension-Brownian Movements. V. CoalesVI. Preparation of Colloidal Solution VII. Properties of Colloidal Solution. VIII. Jellies and Gelatinous Precipitates. IX. Emulsions and Foams. X. Non-aqueous Collodial Solutions. XI. Fog and Smoke. XII. Gases and Solids in Solids. XIII. Thickness of Surface Films. cence. Other Recent Books Hamor and Padget-The Technical Examination of Crude Petroleum, Petroleum Products, and Natural Gas By William Allen Hamor, Assistant Director of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research of the University of Pittsburgh, and Fred. Warde Padgett, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, University of Oklahoma. Mellon Institute Technochemical Series. 591 pages, 6 x 9, 144 illustrations. $6.00 Van der Bijl-The Thermionic Vacuum Tube and its Applications. By H. J. van der Bijl, M.A., Ph.D.; Research Physicist, American Tel. and Tel. Co. and Western Electric Co., New York. 391 pages, 6 x 9, 232 illustrations $5.00 Spurr-Political and Commercial Geology and the World's Mineral Resources. Edited by J. E. Spurr, Editor Engineering and Mining Journal. 561 pages, 6 x 9, 22 illustrations... ..$5.00 ... Send for copies of these new books on approval MCGRAW-HILL BOOK CO., PENN TERMINAL BUILING 370 Seventh Avenue New York viii Price subject to change without notice ARTHUR H. THOMAS COMPANY WHOLESALE, RETAIL AND EXPORT MERCHANTS LABORATORY APPARATUS AND REAGENTS WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE PHILADELPHIA, U. S SAMUEL JAMES MELTZER1 DR. SAMUEL JAMES MELTZER was born in Curland, northwestern Russia, March 22, 1851. He received his preliminary education in a Real Gymnasium in Königsberg and his later training in the University of Berlin where he graduated in medicine in 1882. After taking his medical degree he decided to make his career in America, as the country which in his opinion had the best form of government. He had not sufficient means to make the journey and was therefore obliged to secure a position as ship's surgeon on one of the transatlantic vessels. On arriving in New York it was necessary in the beginning to devote his time mainly to building up a practise sufficient to support his family, but almost from the beginning he made arrangements also to give part of his time to research. From that period until his death on November 7, 1920, in his seventieth year he was a tireless investigator. When in the course of time the opportunity came to him from the Rockefeller Institute to give his time entirely to research he did not hesitate in making his decision. At a considerable financial sacrifice he abandoned his medical practise to devote himself to the kind of work that he most loved and most valued. By his good work and his high character he attained a position of honor and distinction in American medicine and endeared himself to his fellow-workers in all parts of the country. His productivity was remarkable. The list of his published papers includes over two hundred and forty titles, distributed among some forty-eight scientific journals of this country, Germany and England. These papers contain contributions to the subjects 1 Read before the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Chicago, December 28, 1920. 100 of physiology, pharmacology, pathology and clinical medicine together with a number of lectures and general addresses. That he was an investigator of recognized standing in these several branches of medicine and was regarded as a valued contributor to so many scientific journals of the first rank is a striking demonstration of the breadth of his interests and knowledge. He was a member of twenty or more national scientific or clinical societies and in all of them it may be said he was prepared to take his part as an expert in the reading and the discussion of technical papers. He served as president of the American Physiological Society, the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the American Gastro-enterological Society, the American Society for the Advancement of Clinical Research, the Association of American Physicians and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. The membership in these societies is composed of trained specialists. It is their custom to choose as their presiding officer only those who have made contributions of distinction to the subject to which the society is devoted. It seems to me unique in the modern history of medicine for one man to have received such special recognition from technical workers in so many different fields. "to was hibited a dog in which Herr Cand. 1 While his activities covered this large range he was interested primarily in physiology. "I belong," he said in a recent paper those who believe . . . that the knowledge of physiology is of special importance to clinical medicine." His work in this field entitles him certainly to be ranked among the foremost American physiologists. In attempting to present some estimate of the results of his labors I must limit myself mainly to his physiological activity. Indeed in this subject alone his papers are so varied that it will be possible to bring under review only what seem to be his major contributions. His first appearance as an investigator is recorded in a brief note in the Proceedings of the Berlin Physiological Society, May 14, 1880. In this note it is stated that Professor Kronecker ex hibition of the expiratory muscles and vice versa, and he goes on to make the suggestion that a similar relationship must prevail in the case of all antagonistic muscles such as the extensors and flexors of the limbs. Some ten years later Sherrington gave the necessary demonstration that this interrelation does hold with the muscular antagonists, that the contraction of the one is accompanied by the inhibition of the other and he designated this relationship under the term of "reciprocal innervation." Meltzer meanwhile had been accumulating instances of this combined action of excitation and inhibition, but he neglected at that period to apply a distinctive name to this kind of correlated activity. There can be no doubt that when it is possible to label an idea with an appropriate designation its currency in the scientific world is greatly facilitated. In his paper on The Self-Regulation of Respiration" read before the American Physiological Society in 1889 and published in the New York Medical Journal and under a different title in the Archiv. für Physiologie he describes experiments intended to show that two kinds of afferent fibers exist in the vagus nerve, one exciting and the other inhibiting inspiratory movements. He used this fact to modify the Hering-Breuer theory of the self-regulation of the respirations by assuming that the expansion of the lungs stimulates both groups of fibers. The resultant effect, as in the case of the simultaneous stimulation of the motor and inhibitory fibers to the heart, is a dominance of the inhibitory effect, thus cutting short the inspiration and bringing on an expiration. But after the inhibition ceases the excitatory fibers, which, like the acceleratory fibers of the heart have a long after action, come into play and start a new inspiration. In his first general paper on inhibition this idea of a combined action of opposing processes is extended by the citation of numerous instances taken from physiological literature and is expanded into a general theory which makes inhibition a universal property of irritable tissues. "I entertain and defend the view that the phenomena of life are not simply the outcome of the single factor of excitation, but they are the result of a compromise between two antagonistic factors, the fundamental forces of life, excitation and inhibition.' That is to say, whenever a tissue is stimulated two different processes are aroused, one leading to functional activity and one to a suppression of activity. As to the nature of these processes very little is said. He was not satisfied with the Hering-Gaskell conception that excitation follows or is an accompaniment of catabolic changes while inhibition is due to processes of an anabolic or assimilative character. He goes only so far as to assume that both processes are concerned with the kinetic and potential energies of the system, that excitation facilitates the conversion of potential to kinetic energy while inhibition hinders or retards this conversion, like the turning off or on of a stopcock. Nor was he satisfied with Sherrington's term of reciprocal innervation to describe all of the phenomena he had in mind. While this phrase is a suitable designation for the relationship between physically antagonistic muscles such as the flexors and extensors it is less appropriate in other cases, for example the simultaneous phases of contraction and inhibition exhibited in peristalsis. In later papers he suggested first the term crossed innervation borrowed from von Basch, but subsequently adopted the designation of contrary innervation as more applicable to the whole series of phenomena which he was considering. This process he believed is universal in its action-it is "manifest in all the functions of the animal body." Moreover his experience and observation as a practising physician led him to believe that "a disturbance of this law is a factor of more or less importance in the pathogenesis of many disorders and diseases of the animal body." In this way he would explain in part at least the muscular incoordination in tabes and the gastric crises of that disease, as well as gastric and intestinal colic in general. If the orderly sequence of a peristaltic wave is |