The Monthly Review

The Monthly Review. This January 1800 issue offers a panoramic survey of contemporary books and pamphlets across science, mathematics, medicine, architecture, agriculture, education, religion, and public policy. It surveys a biographical and scientific digest critiquing the craft of biography, then proceeds to summaries of papers on Strontian minerals and peculiar earth, Guiana natural history, calculus and fluxions, Indian mathematics, trigonometry, porisms, practical astronomy, halos and optical phenomena, and the dating of mathematical ideas. It discusses Gothic architecture through an essay on a simple, imitational principle and reviews portraits of Scotland, social reform and Dublin’s House of Industry, and county agricultural surveys. It includes translations and discussions of Spallanzani on animalcules and revival phenomena, Ferriar’s Essay on Digitalis Purpurea, and extensive education reviews such as Edgeworth’s Practical Education with reflections on governesses and domestic instruction. Police reform, Bentham’s Panopticon, and overall advocacy for empirical, useful knowledge tie the issue together. The excerpt ends mid-discussion of Ferriar’s digitalis treatment, indicating continuation in subsequent parts.