Physical Expression. By Francis Warner, M.D. " The International Scientific)
Series." (Kagan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Such a subject as physical expression, which includes the pasture of the limbs, as well as that wonderful and complex assembly of various emotions, the human face, cannot have a too careful or too delicate analysis. Dr. Warner writes with a thorough love and knowledge of the study ; he makes no generalisations, and draws no hasty conclusions, but sub- jects all various outward expressions to a careful and accurate analysis and scrutiny. The phenomena of reflex notions are of great interest, and their indications of the utmost value. Their independence of and struggles with the will present a curious and interesting problem. A man who makes up his mind to pass a certain plate, but drops it, owing to its being hot, before his will has had time to prevent the catastrophe, is a case in point. In the book before us many striking instances of the loss of physical expression from brain-disease are described and illustrated ; the face of a man suffering from paralysis agitans on p. 213 will explain what we mean. The hand-postures in athetosis, and the finger-twitching in chorea, no doubt possess value; but we cannot Help thinking that too much importance is attached to them as indications of diseased or irregular nerve.contres. An account of the significant postures of half-a-dozen of the most famous statues of the old world serves to illustrate the knowledge of physioal ex- pression arrived at by the artists, and their power of producing it with the chisel. The description of the motor-ganntlet and its use in recording movements, and a chapter on the study of chorea, bring to an able conclusion a book which is entitled to rank as a standard work of reference.
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