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An excerpt of a review from The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Volume 122, July, 1901: THE study of comparative pathology has but recently attracted the attention which it deserves. To the zoologist, to the pathologist, and to the clinician it has a fascination as well as a large amount of practical value. The book which forms the text of this review presents the subject in an extremely attractive manner, avoiding, on the one hand, the too elaborate consideration of the pathological conditions discussed, and, on the other hand, going sufficiently into detail to make the book more useful to the practitioner of medicine than would be a more comprehensive text-book upon the same subject. It is full of suggestive thoughts bearing upon the pathology of human disease, and its perusal cannot fail to interest as well as broaden the views of the reader. The main argument which the author constantly brings up to explain pathological lesions in the human being is the lessened resistance and greater instability of parts latest developed in the scale of evolution and in those tending to return to the ancestral type. It might be said that this argument is at times rather overworked. However, it undoubtedly plays an important part in human pathology, and it is well that a clear exposition of a believer in this factor of disease should be heard. One of the most interesting chapters in the book is that upon the deformities of the chest in the light of its ancestry an growth, in which the author shows the fallacy of the statement that in pulmonary tuberculosis the antero-posterior diameter of the chest is diminished. He explains the fact that the chest of tuberculous patients is described as flat by stating that the appearance is due to the carrying forward of the shoulders rather than to any change in the shape of the chest itself. His views in regard to the genesis of tumors are very well worth reading, although some of them can hardly be considered as proven or tenable. Instability is here also looked upon as an extremely important element in the causation of tumor formation. While this book cannot be regarded as thoroughly scientific, it is one that will well repay perusal by physician, surgeon, and pathologist. To the busy practitioner who has not time to read the exhaustive treatises upon comparative pathology, or who could not fully comprehend them were he to take the time to do so, a perusal of the book will not only interest him, but will broaden his views of human disease processes.

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