In 1965 the European Association for the Study of Diabetes planned to prepare a collaborative text on diabetes mellitus. The undertaking grew to such an extent that the work, under the editorship of Professor Pfeiffer from the Department of Internal Medicine of the University of Ulm, had to be expanded into two volumes. In the first, a huge amount of morphologic, biochemical, physiologic, and pharmacologic information, pertaining more or less directly to the understanding of diabetes mellitus, is summarized.
The second volume will deal with the clinical aspects of the disease. Forty-seven contributors from ten countries have participated, but the text is bilingual, with about two thirds in German and one third in English. The first portion is devoted to the comparative morphology and histochemistry of the islets of Langerhans; insulin and glucagon are considered next; this is followed by discussions of intermediary metabolism, which are, at least in