The Thyroid

This new edition of Werner's well-known text is a collaborative enterprise of pith and moment: it has 65 contributors. The thyroid experts, like others, know more and more about less and less. It must be a formidable editorial task to keep a team of 65 in line. Dr. Werner has succeeded remarkably well. There is surprisingly little clashing of disparate styles. Overlap among chapters has been largely avoided, except where an effort was made to keep biosynthesis of thyroid hormones and thyroid biochemistry apart (which is obviously impossible). Nevertheless, there is something faintly disconcerting about this parade of stars: highly condensed summaries of a specialized field by the leading experts often are virtuoso performances, but behind many a didactic statement almost palpably lurk the mental reservations of cognoscenti. Although the book is called a "fundamental and clinical text," the writers covering normal morphology, physiology, and biochemistry are not allotted the