The scale has been tested quite widely both on normal and defective children, the most important test on normals being that of Goddard who tried it on nearly 2,000 public school children.
Dr. Wallin found at Skillman that either the Binet scale was not accurate or else that the conditions surrounding epilepsy make the scale less applicable to that class than to normals or feeble-minded. This observation confirms similar facts disclosed at Vineland and elsewhere in connection with epilepsy and insanity; that is to say, both of these conditions produce eccentricities which the scale does not exactly meet.
While the Binet scale is an extremely useful device and one which will be more used, it is only reasonable to suppose that it will be modified, in the future, as it has been in the past, by Goddard and others. But no matter how carefully modified, it is not claimed to be, and will not be claimed to be, an all-sufficient test on such questions as sterilization, final segregation and other very important things. Physical tests of various kinds will also be used.
Dr. Wallin’s book concludes with a copy of the Binet scale with directions for its use, all of which are very valuable. On the whole the book is a distinct contribution to the literature of the subject and it is to be hoped that the author’s example in testing out large numbers of abnormals of different kinds and then publishing the results will be followed. We know qualitatively a great deal about the feeble-minded and epileptic, but our quantitative knowledge is still far from complete.
Alexander Johnson.
PATHFINDERS IN MEDICINE
By Victor Robinson. Medical Review of Reviews. 317 pp. Price $2.50; by mail of The Survey $2.67.
This book contains a series of papers most of which have already appeared in the Medical Review of Reviews, the Medical Record, and other magazines. It is dedicated to Ernst Haeckel. Dr. Abraham Jacobi wrote the preface.
The Pathfinders include famous men whose names are familiar to every one, such as Galen, Paracelsus, Servetus, Paré, Hunter, Jenner and Darwin, and also some who are only vaguely known to most of us. Among these are Aretaeus, Scheele, Laennec, Semmelweiss. We are not told what prompted the selection of these particular Pathfinders, or why such names as Boerhaave, Sydenham, Pasteur and Virchow were omitted, but one cannot demand that such a book be all-inclusive.
Mr. Robinson has lived with the characters of whom he writes until he has formed a vivid picture of the personality of each, a picture he manages to convey to his audience with great success. Naturally it is the earlier Pathfinders who are most interesting to the ordinary reader and the chapter on Galen holds many surprises for those who have been accustomed to think of the medical skill of the ancients very much as we think of Chinese medicine of today. Galen knew that consumption was communicable, and his disquisitions on dietetics and hygiene are almost incredibly modern.