According to the author, the book is intended for senior medical students and practitioners of medicine whose busy lives do not permit them to read more extensive textbooks. The author, thus, assumes on the part of the readers the knowledge secured in a thorough course in the fundamentals of physiology, and on the basis of this he endeavors to analyze or explain symptoms of disordered functions in patients.
This is not the first nor the ablest venture in this field. The informed reader finishes the book with the feeling that Professor McDowell has not materially improved on Hewlett's "Pathological Physiology," and in many chapters he is clearly inferior to the latter. On the whole the Professor McDowell shows less critical judgment in the handling of conflicting data than the late Professor Hewlett.
In speaking of medical students, the author says that "it is extremely difficult, indeed almost impossible from the