Joint Diseases: Treatment by Rest and Fixation. Pp. 15. Surgical Treatment of Infants. Pp. 12. By De Forest Willard, M. D. Philadelphia.
Dr. Willard holds that rest subdues joint-inflammation more effectually than all other means combined, and that the more perfect the rest the greater will be the diminution of pressure, tension, and inflammation, and of their resultant ankylosis and suppuration. The pamphlet contains the arguments in support of his views and descriptions of the appliances, and their applications, by which he secures the rest he prescribes.
The second paper is an address which was read in June of last year before the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society. The author believes that the surgery of childhood, as compared with that of adult life, is, aside even from congenital defects, sufficiently marked and distinctive to entitle it to separate consideration. Even the anatomy of the child can not be learned from the ordinary adult dissections during a college course, but the surgeon must make himself specially acquainted with it. References are made, in the course of the address, to classes of cases in which special treatment and applications may be called for.
The Prehistoric Palace of the Kings of Tiryns. By Dr. Henry Schliemann. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 385, with Chromo-lithographic Plates, Map, and Plans. Price, $10.
The citadel of Tiryns is one of the most ancient ruins in Europe. The city which it represents had its origin and probably its whole existence in prehistoric times. It is treated in Homer's "Iliad" as a place whose greatness was of the past, while Mycenæ was still vigorous and Argos rising. Its massive remains or "cyclopean walls," standing some eighty feet above the sea back of the Gulf of Nauplia, were regarded as a miracle in ancient days, and have been objects of wonder to Greeks, Romans, and moderns, for twenty-five hundred years. Dr. Schliemann having attacked, with more or less of satisfaction in the result, Troy, Mycenæ, and Orchomenos, it was natural that the attention of the great archæologist should be directed to their rival in antiquity and in association with the legends of the heroic age. His work at Tiryns has been rather more successful than at the other places he has explored, because he has gone at it with the benefit of acquired experience, and has been able to perform it more systematically and in such a way as to insure the preservation of everything. He has laid bare the whole plan of the palace and fortress, with all of its most important details, and has given the means for forming a clear idea of how those Herakleid or Perseid Greeks lived. The palace was reached by a winding carriage-way duly guarded with gates, the thresholds, bolt-holes, and pivotal hinge-holes of which, and the ashes of the wooden parts, are still visible. The plan of the palace was elaborate, and reveals a grouping around two centers, the hall of the men and the hall of the women, communication between which was only indirect. The walls were adorned with paintings in animal and geometrical designs, and plaques of alabaster with designs in blue-glass paste, fac-similes of which are given in the colored plates of the book. One of the most remarkable features of the building was the bath-room, which was floored with a single slab of stone of eight by ten feet, that can not weigh less than nineteen tons. Within this room was found a fragment of the terra-cotta tub in which the heroes took their baths. The arrangements for drainage and the whole plan of the palace show a considerable advance in civilization, when, as we have been accustomed to believe, civilization had hardly begun on that spot. The excavations, to which Dr. Schliemann had given his personal attention, were continued while he was preparing his account, during 1885, by his collaborator, the distinguished German archaeologist, Dr. William Dorpfeld. He made a series of new discoveries hardly less interesting than those which had already been made. Among them are the facts that the huge stones of which the walls were built were not absolutely rude, but were roughly hewed and shaped for their purpose; that the walls were built with clay mortar, which has been washed away in all the exposed portions; and that these walls, which arc of great thickness, have chambers within them to which access
