Die Neuronenlehre und ihre Anhanger

Abstract

ONE approaches this work with rather mixed feelings. While there is no doubt that an exhaustive survey of our present knowledge in any branch of science is certain to well repay the investigator, yet a book of the magnitude of the one now under consideration, which contains only a controversial view of already known facts, without introducing anything beyond what is familiar to us, leaves on the mind of the reader something of a feeling of weariness, and a suspicion that the same amount of labour would have been better expended in quarrying fresh knowledge rather than reshaping the blocks that have been already brought out. The author himself has realised this, and in the preface gives the reasons which induced him to give the present form to the book. That even scientific men are too prone to take a plausible hypothesis as proved, and to fill in the little gaps in the observed facts with more or less probable assumptions, is unfortunately true in many branches of research besides the one in question, and the work even of an advocatus Diaboli may be of value if only to point out the places in the theory where these assumptions occur. Particularly has this been the case in the domain of nerve physiology, and the present volume is a useful corrective.

Die Neuronenlehre und ihre Anhanger.

By Dr. Franz Nissl. Pp. vi + 478. (Jena: Gustav Fischer.) Price 12 marks.