The widespread ignorance and superstition with which even to-day the practicing physician has to contend are hardly conceivable by an outsider. The conditions under which a doctor knows his patients are just those calculated to bring out the weak spots in their mental organization, and the absurd notions which still have a foothold in many minds are a constant source of wonder to the speculative doctor. These superstitions are so widespread and so frequently dangerous to the whole community, as well as the individual himself, that anything which is calculated to improve matters, however so little, should be welcomed with open arms. _Dr. Therne_, by _H. Rider Haggard_, is aimed at the antivaccinators, and by means of a not uninteresting story points out the serious consequences which a general belief in this absurd crusade brought to an English city. The author labels his story as an attempt to forecast the "almost certain issue of the recent surrender of the English Government leaders to the clamor of the antivaccinationists." The annual number of the _Cumulative Index_ for 1898, constituting the third annual volume, is a book of seven hundred and ninety-two pages, and includes one hundred periodicals. It indexes--by authors, titles, and subjects, including reviews and portraits--what is important in the monthly and part of that in the weekly publications of the year. Special attention is given to portraits, reviews, and necrology. The Index is a very useful publication to writers and students of every sort, recording the articles as they appear month by month in a form that makes the knowledge of them easily accessible to one who seeks it. The numbers succeeding the first number of the volume include, besides their own fresh matter, that which has appeared in two or three previous numbers, saving the necessity of hunting up scattered editions. The annual volume contains all for the year. The Index is edited in the Public Library of Cleveland, Ohio, and is published by the Holman-Taylor Company in the same city. Two papers bearing upon instruction of the deaf, published by the Volta Bureau, Washington, are statistics, by Alexander G. Bell, of the relative use in the United States of the several methods, and a collection of _International Reports of Schools for the Deaf_. The latter paper contains reports from sixteen countries. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Armour Institute of Technology. Year-Book, 1898-'99. Pp. 89. Association of American Anatomists. Report of the Majority of the Committee on Anatomical Nomenclature. Pp. 10.