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AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

PUBLIC HEALTH

Ethics in Nursing-By Gene Harrison, St. Louis: Mosby, 154 Fp. Price, $1.50. The author states that this volume on ethics is meant for the modern nurse who does her own thinking in a nursing school where the old militaristic type of etiquette is no longer in vogue. Yet somehow the author's tone gives one the impression that she trained and taught and had most of her experience in a militaristic type of school. There are too many must's and should's, too much formality. There is a general introduction with many explanations more or less concrete of what ethics is, how it developed and the like. Part I is for the undergraduate, and here one whole chapter is given over to choice of a vocation and of a nursing school, which presumably the nurse has already made and no longer needs. The second part of the book is for graduates. Here it is a little hard to see why the description of lines of work a nurse mav choose after graduation has to do with ethics which is concerned with right and wrong. The author has stated in clear form the organizations a nurse should belong to when she graduates. Most young graduates are in a muddle as to the difference between belonging to alumnae associations and the district, state, and American Nurses' Association. Many of them think it costs money to enroll in the Red Cross Nursing Service. Most of the ethical problems of a nurse are dealt with in this book, but one of the greatest ethical problems a nurse has seems to be conspicuously absent-that of her relation to the physician. The word doctor appears but once in the book and that only incidentally. Perhaps ethics in nursing does not include the doctor, but it seems to me the patient may as well be left out as the physician. The public health nurse, for instance, often finds

her medical ethics problems very difficult because she has the patients of not only all the physicians in the community but of every quack as well. Something could be said about the loyalty of private duty and institutional nurses both in word and deed to individual physicians or medical staff. There are new ideas in the book, and the style is vigorous and individual, but in my opinion better books on ethics for nurses are already on the market. EVA F. MACDOUGALL

Slums, Large-Scale Housing and Decentralization. Reports of the Committees on Blighted Areas and Slums, Large-Scale Operations, Business and Housing, Industrial Decentralization and Housing. The President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership. Washington, D. C., 1932. Edited by John M. Gries and James Ford. 245 pp. Price, $1.15. It is generally believed that because of their lack of financial resources poor people must live in slums and blighted districts. For some time, however, a
group of able minds has been at work on the housing problem for persons of limited means. The present volume presents the results of the deliberations of four sub-committees of President Hoover's Conference on Home Building and House Ownership dealing with

this very problem. The obstacles to slum clearance are many-in fact too many to discuss in detail here. Many of these are of relatively little importance. Two of the greatest obstacles are the lack of legal authority required for slum clearance and the problem of adequate financing arrangements. Both of these important parts of the problem are discussed in a most satisfactory manner in the committee reports. The plan for slum clearance submitted by Mr. Veiller is a model for practical use and alone is

BOOKS AND REPORTS

a valuable document on the housing problem. Other portions of the volume deal with large-scale operations, business and housing, and a most valuable discussion of industrial decentralization and housing is presented. A plea is made for a more widespread application of the new viewpoint in the housing field, the viewpoint of industrial large scale fabrication and assembly. It is interesting to note that this aspect of the problem is receiving the attention of the industrialists. At the forthcoming Chicago exposition such factory-made homes will be on exhibit. Perhaps the present depression is laying the groundwork for the remedy of one of the old social evils. LEONARD GREENBURG

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adjustment to his environment. The child should emerge from the educational system as a personality that has acquired a necessary amount of information for present needs-how and where to secure additional information -how properly to assimilate and apply it to his problems. He should have a sound mind in a sound body ready to be of service to himself and to his community. The authors of this book have recognized three great factors in the educational process and stress these occasionally so that they may not be lost sight of in the great mass of material on this subject. These are:
First-What are the problems always faced by the teacher, as a personality, if adequate instruction is to be given at all times? Second-How adequate in the light of educations psychology are the various methods of instruction and the machinery of the school system ? Third-What are the merits of educational psychology, itself, as a set of principles by means of which to determine educational machinery, methods, and an understanding of the child ?

Principles of Mental Development. A Textbook in Educational Psychology - By Raymond Holder Wheeler and Francis Theodore Perkins. New York: Crowell, 1932. 529 pp. Price, $3.75. This textbook has been written with the purpose of placing the prospective teacher in such a position that the varied problems in the schoolroom and in that part of the community represented in that room may be met in an intelligent and a helpful, guiding spirit. The teacher can no longer approach his work with an idea of pouring out profusely the store of knowledge and information in his possession irrespective of the needs of the individual pupil. This book has placed in a readable, intelligible, and helpful manner the recent advances in those subjects bearing upon the education of the child of today. It covers in one volume a vast store of knowledge and practical information which should prove a blessing to the teacher and the one taught. Each child is entitled to gather the necessary amount of book learning, but far above that is his right to be taught the art of living, and the value of self-

This text is a step in the righ-t direction and cannot fail to assist the conscientious prospective teacher (as well as the one in the work) to see the work in a new light-a wealth of material is placed at his disposal and should help make him a helpful and an inspiring personality in the great work of preparing human beings for successful living-that great field where each must face life, understand life, and CHARLES HAMMOND live it.
New Jersey's Agricultural Experiment Station-1880-1930-Bv C. R. Woodward and E. N. Waller. New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, New Brunswick, N. J., 1932. 645 pp. Price, $2.50. This volume is necessarily both a history of the development of the Agricultural Experiment Station and a