Manual of Bacteriology

The first edition of this work which appeared in 1897 was favourably reviewed in these columns in March 1898. The early appearance of a second edition showed that the book deserved the praise that was then bestowed upon it. The alterations are not many, and there has been no change in the original plan of the book. The text has been carefully revised, and the results of more recent researches have been included. As a result the book has expanded by sixty-four pages and eighteen illustrations, and is more complete and up-to-date. Turning to the chapters of most interest to us in India just now, we note that the authors give Haffkine's researches on plague due prominence, and recognise that his preventive inoculations have been proved to be of great value. Rats are credited with playing the most important part in distributing the disease over wide areas when once the disease lias broken out. Ogata, it is said, has furnished evidence that flies and mosquitoes may spread the disease. M. it tall, however, in his Johns Hopkins Hospital Report (Vol. VIII) has shown that there are really no facts upon which to base such an opinion as regards mosquitoes. The chapter on Malarial Fever is a good summary of the facts known, though liardly up to date in every respect. The application ol Ross's discoveries of the life-history of proteoso-