Pharmaceutische Rundschau. (Pharmaceutical Review.) Published by Dr. Fr. Hoffmann, 64 Ann Street, New York. Monthly. Pp. 24. $2 a year.
This new publication, conducted by a gentleman of the best standing in his profession, starts out with the promise of being a journal of a high order and a valuable addition to the literature of scientific specialties. It is devoted to the scientific and professional interests of pharmacy and kindred branches in the United States, and labors with well-directed vigor in every department for the maintenance and elevation of the standard of scientific attainment in its profession. The February number contains editorial articles on "Pharmacy and Public Sanitary Conditions," and "Pharmacy and Homœopathy." In the March number the editor, under the heading "Kurpfuscherei?"—which we might translate "Cure-bungling"—presents a well-considered and well-tempered discussion of the propriety of allowing apothecaries to dispense medicines, and of requiring them to qualify themselves to do so with discretion. The two numbers contain original contributions on the testing of liquorice-juice and of quinine-pills, sorghum-sugar, mass-analysis, the "Pharmacopœia of the United States," and the preparation of medicinal doses by compression. A considerable part of each number is occupied with the systematic presentation in a compressed form of notable facts in the progress of the science as currently recorded in the various journals of this and other countries, and to the proceedings of pharmaceutical societies and associations.
Whence, What, Where? A View of the Origin, Nature, and Destiny of Man. By James R. Nichols, M. D., A. M., Editor of "The Boston Journal of Chemistry." Third edition, revised. Boston: A. Williams & Co. Pp. 198. Price, $1.
This thoughtful volume consists of inculcations, reflections, and speculations touching those questions of the origin, nature, and destiny of man that have ever been regarded as of transcendent interest, now man has originated, what is the true constitution of his being, and how he stands related to the great indefinite future, are inquiries that, on the one hand, find simple answers in the beliefs of uninstructed people, and which, on the other hand, have tasked the highest philosophy of all ages, with no final agreement. But, although there remains, perhaps, as much conflict as ever over these problems, it would be wrong to say that the outcome of inquiry in all these directions has been futile. Certainly, as regards the whence and the what of humanity, a great deal is now known of which men in earlier times were profoundly ignorant. Man's nature—that is, the laws of his constitution—has been studied with fruitful results, and the laws and the knowledge thus obtained have thrown a not entirely uncertain light upon the question of his origin. Of one thing we have positive assurance: the order of phenomenal nature, of which man is a part, is no inscrutable secret; it is open to the research of reason, and it is capable of being understood as far as the nature of human intelligence will permit. The field is, therefore, open in which we may verify and extend the inquiries already begun in regard to what man essentially is and whence he has originated—the field of orderly, phenomenal, explorable nature.
But there are those and they are possibly more numerous in these days than ever before—who maintain that man is shut into the present sphere by inexorable limits, and that, while he remains the being he is, he can never know that which is beyond the cosmical sphere of his observation and experience. They hold that this human intelligence is finite, and therefore by its quality is restricted to finite things, and can never grasp what is beyond the finite. They claim that, in its very essence, knowing is but a recognition of finite relations; that mind itself has been evolved and constituted by intercourse with nature, and is without capacities to deal with any other sphere of being. They insist that, as the human mind is finite and limited, it must stop somewhere by virtue of inherent incapacity, and that this boundary is the phenomenal sphere of being. That there may be other orders of being, and other universes beyond, they do not deny; but they say that our relations to them can never include a knowledge of them in the sense in which the term knowledge is applied to the surrounding order of things.
But the protest against this circumscrip-
