Abstract
THIS book begins with the thesis that civilisation is a mistake because it is a negation of the “wild,”the law of which is “Thou shalt be fit or thou shalt die.” But we are justified in asking, What is “fitness”? The author appears to have left the development of the brain altogether out of consideration. Do music and painting count for nothing? The statement, is made that “suffering has come with the law of the artificial”—that is, the civilised. If we are to accept this we must hold that all existences prior to civilisation were devoid of consciousness. Disease is certainly not absent from wild animals or men, and when the author says that it has increased enormously owing to civilisation, we must remember that the conditions producing it can and must be done away with, and this without abolishing civilisation itself. Moreover, is not the increase spoken of apparent merely and due to improved means of detection? It may be doubted whether the physician is the best judge as to the extent of the increase.
Studies in Electro-pathology.
By Temp. Major A. White Robertson. Illustrated. Pp. viii + 304. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1918.) Price 12s. 6d. net.
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B., W. Studies in Electro-pathology . Nature 102, 224 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/102224a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/102224a0