MAT: ley, very high authority on abnormal conditions of mind, says: "It is certain that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as the steam engine and calico printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complex that we are unable to follow them." Our laws for the cure or treatment of crime are made usually by those who care but little about the subject and who know still less. Many of our prisons are managed by men who know as little of the proper methods of treating a morally diseased mind as a blind hog does of chromatics. We are making progress, however, in spite of all obstacles, and prison reformers are sure sooner or later to win the righteous battle in which they have engaged heart and soul. The time will come when every punitive institution in the civilized world, will be destroyed, and all places for the treatment of crime be hospitals, schools, workshops, and reformatories. ANDREW J. PALM. AMONG THE BOOKS. Wheelbarrow. By Gen. M. M. Trumbull. 12mo. 303 pp. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. The author of this admirable book calls it "Wheelbarrow," because that, he says, was the implement of his handicraft when he was a strong man. He lays claim to the honor of once having been a "railroad man" by profession, holding the responsible position of helping to make the road bed with pick and shovel and wheelbarrow. But few men have had the varied experience of General Trumbull and fewer still have the ability to express themselves in so vigorous and happy a style. In addition to the good hard sense to be found in every chapter of this book, there is more genuine wit and humor in it than can be found in almost any book labeled "humorous." The brief biography with which it opens describes in a very interesting manner the author's early experience in his English home, his first distinct recollection being that of seeing his father hurried off to Marshalsea prison for debt--the historic prison made famous as well as infamous by Charles Dickens in "Little Dorrit." He describes in vivid language his voyage across the Atlantic in the English emigrant ship Julius Cæsar, which carried four hundred men, women, and children, mostly Irish peasants fleeing from the famine that was then ravaging Ireland. He declares that the loss of life from fever and famine in that ship was greater in proportion to the number present than the loss at Waterloo, Gravelotte, or the battles around Atlanta. Sixty-two died and were buried in the sea and it was estimated that a still greater number died after reaching port. He worked a few days as roustabout, after landing, and considered it a great improvement to get a situation on a Canadian railroad as engineer of a wheelbarrow. He next tried farming long enough to be convinced that farm labor is skilled labor and gave it up on the advice of his employer, to take a country school. From the schoolroom he went back to railroading, expecting to spend his vacation running the wheelbarrow; but teaching had made him somewhat fastidious, and he could no longer enjoy the manners and conversation of those at the shanty where he lived. He soon packed up and started for Boston on foot, where he found a position handling barrels in a pork warehouse. The next situation in which he found himself was serving as an American soldier in Mexico. After his discharge from the army he engaged in various occupations, among them hod carrying and teaching, until he was able to pass an examination for admission to the bar, as a result of having improved his spare time in studying law. He was elected as a Republican member of the Illinois legislature in 1857 and spent his time between the law and the legislature until the breaking out of the Civil War, when he enlisted, going out as captain and coming back at the close of the war as brigadier general. He was made collecter of internal revenue and served during the whole of Grant's administration. His life affords a good illustration of the power of pluck and ability to surmount obstacles that seem to block the way to success. The book contains about fifty essays on subjects of social and political interest. Among them are: The Laokoön of Labor, Competition in Trades, Convict Labor, Honest and Dishonest Wages, Monetary Problems, The Poets of Liberty and Labor, Henry George and Land Taxation, Economic Conferences, Making Bread Dear, Making Bread Cheap, and The Single Tax Question. They are all admirably written and are well worthy a careful reading by all who are interested in these important topics. Here is a specimen of his "chunks of sense": "I desire to see the monetary policy of the country on a solid and scientific foundation. To me it is not a question of party expediency : it is a question of bread. I don't know how to build a house, but I can tell a good job of work when I see it. If I see a crack in the wall, I suspect a bad foundation, and I know that a botch has had something to do with it. When I find the secretary of the treasury paying off the 3 per cent bonds, and further discover that the United States of America has bound itself by a solemn treaty with the United States of Wall Street not to pay its 4 per cents until the year 1907, I know that the job was a botch, and that the Congress that did the work was a lot of 'plugs' or they were knaves making bad laws for their own profit.” Most of his positions are so well taken, so ably argued and aptly illustrated that the reader will be ready to accept them without question. His views on the money question are not in accord either with the newer school of political economists with whom Ingalls agrees when he says, "Money is a creature of law," nor with the old school that believes either in the single gold standard or a restricted coinage of silver. A pleasant feature of the book is the broad spirit of humanity that pervades every chapter and shows its author to be a liberalminded, large-hearted man, who loves his fellow-creatures. Nurses and Nursing. By Lisbeth D. Price. 12mo. 321 pages. Meadville, Pa.: Flood & Vincent. The physician and the professional nurse form a sort of limited partnership so far as their duties are concerned, the physician usually getting the lion's share of the pay, while to the nurse usually falls the burden of labor, and oftentimes the greater credit for success in dealing with physical afflictions; Miss Price, however, does not intimate anything of this kind in her book. On the contrary, if fault may be found with her on this point it is that she makes the nurse too much of a mere machine to carry out the orders of the physician, who is always presumed to know what is best to be done. She places loyalty to the physician as the highest virtue on the part of the nurse. This is, no doubt, a very essential qualification, and yet it occurs to us that Miss Price follows the rule too servilely. Physicians sometimes seem to have a higher consideration for what they are pleased to call professional ethics than they have for the safety and comfort of suffering humanity. The author of this book has perhaps imbibed some of this professional courtesy for she declares that under no conceivable circumstances should the nurse give her patients internal treatment. She says: "A drop of oil of cloves put into an aching tooth or a drachm of peppermint water for indigestion or anything however harmless in itself, if given unordered by the doctor, is disloyalty to him and a criminal offense against the nurse's profession." We can conceive of cases in which the blind observance of this rule would stultify the nurse, provoke the sensible physician, and be malpractice toward the patient. If the doctor should leave, forgetting to say that the patient might have a drink of pure water when thirsty, this extreme loyalty would insist on allowing the parched lips to await the coming of the doctor for authority to give this internal treatment. Sensible courtesy and sensible loyalty are all right, but there is a kind that approaches in sublime foolishness that of the dude who stood on the bank of the river strenuously refusing to help a lady who had fallen into the water, on the ground that he had never been introduced to her. The book opens with a brief introduction by E. E. Montgomery, late professor of obstetrics in the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia, who says that the duty of nursing is no longer left to the ignorant and those incapable of doing anything else, but those who now follow it as a vocation come from the best ranks of the community. To their credit he says: "In the department of surgery, and particularly that of peritoneal surgery the operator prefers to leave the after treatment of his cases in the hands of a nurse thoroughly educated in his methods of practice, than to place the patient in the hands of the family physician." The purpose of the author seems to have been to write a book which her own experience as head nurse indicated would be welcomed by professional nurses, and at the same time not be beyond the comprehension of the thousands of intelligent mothers, sisters, and daughters who are obliged to do duty as nurses in the home circle. Instructions are given to cover every phase of the nurse's experience from cleaning the finger nails of a patient to nursing diphtheria or caring for the newborn baby. The chapter on Food for Invalids and Children contains a |