26 JULY 1884, Page 24

Dr. Benjamin Ridge publishes a new edition of Ourselves :

Our Food and Our Physic (Charles Higham), very much enlarged from the original, which appeared in 1861, and of which we are told that fifteen thousand were sold in the course of the next twenty years. Dr. Ridge is, we gather, not quite in accord with his professional brethren. He quotes Majendie with approval, who told his students that a patient left without drugs had a far better chance of recovery than one who had them. For all this, he gives a good many prescrip- tions. His real meaning, however, might, it seems, be summed up in the famous piece of advice which Abernethy is said to have given to his patients—" Read my book."