As a fundamental mechanism of disease, disseminated intravascular coagulation is no respecter of categories or special fields of medical practice. The author draws his examples and correlates their pathologic physiology and anatomy from patients with surgical, medical, obstetric, or gynecologic problems. The age span of the patients affected places them in pediatric beds, on general medical or surgical wards, or in geriatric institutions. The internist, hematologist, surgeon, pediatrician, oncologist, the infectious disease man, the healer, the clinical investigator, or the animal experimenter all may encounter the catastrophies that characterize these processes. Disseminated intravascular coagulation may show its onset during a blood transfusion, convalesence from scarlet fever, childbirth, during septicemia, or as a complication of carcinoma to cite but a few of its disparate occurrences. The book, therefore, addresses a wide audience in medicine and does so well. It portrays the importance of this group of pathologic processes and stresses the