VII. NEW BOOKS.

[ These Notes (by various hands) do not exclude Critical Notices later on. ] Our Temperaments : Their Study and their Teaching. A Popular Outline. By ALEXANDER STEWART, F.R.C.S. Edin. With Illustrations. London : Crosby, Lock wood & Co., 1887. Pp. xxvi., 392. The objects set before himself by the author of this work are first to bring into clear light the traditional medical doctrine of the four tempera- ments, and in the next place to make it more precise than it had become either in the hands of the Greek physicians or of those moderns (the Frenchman Richerand and the Spaniard Cortes) from whom other authors have chiefly drawn, when they have not drawn directly from the Greeks ; the result of the whole being that it is possible to infer at once a large number of associated mental and physical qualities from mere observation of certain definite characters of colour and form. In both aims no small success has been attained. Whatever may be the positive value of the author's results and he does not make any exaggerated claims for them his researches and observations will henceforth hold an important place among contributions towards the scientific classification of human types. He himself points out the limitations of the doctrine. It applies only to civilised men ; for no differences depending on the predominance of dif- ferent systems of organs seem to be met with among savages. The distinc- tions that were drawn in ancient times, from Hippocrates onwards, cannot be accepted as true in detail except of the Greeks. Those of Bicherand, the principal authority within the last half century, besides being often vague, are applicable only to French types. Again, the author's own dis- tinctions " are taken from the people of our own country, and therefore may not apply to those of other countries, the physical characteristics and the influences that modify the mental ones being more or less different ". The great defect of the ancient classification was, of course, the omission of the nervous temperament. In compensation, the bilious temperament was duplicated into the "choleric" and the "melancholic"; the last partly supplying the place of the " nervous temperament " of the moderns. The most important addition made by the author to the general description of the temperaments is the assignment to them of definite form-character- istics ; but the advance he has made in precision cannot be measured by single additions, as will be seen when the tables giving his definitive results (pp. 77-80) are compared with the descriptions he quotes from the older authors. One column of each of these tables gives the " physical," another the "mental" characteristics of the four "pure temperaments". The last, in the author's view, do not form part of their determining characteristics; the temperament itself being a matter of direct physical observation, and thus known independently of all associated mental qualities. For this reason, indeed, he would restrict the word " temperament," in literature and con- versation, to physical distinctions. Only the four physical temperaments and their compounds are known by definite marks ; and these are recog- nisable, by the marks assigned, without risk of mistake. In the tables referred to, each temperament is distinguished by three characteristics of colour (as to 'hair,' 'eyes' and 'complexion') and four of form (as to ' face,' ' nose,' ' neck ' and ' build '). The nervous temperament differs from the rest in all characteristics, both of colour and form ; while the