Organic Chemistry
It is my view that the unity and consistently critical attitude of Ivy's book make his the more generally useful book of reference.
Abstract
containing 66 chapters on anatomy, physiology, pathology, aetiology, diagnosis, and medical and surgical treatment contributed by 74 distinguished American authorities, two Canadian, and one British. A book of this character gains from the special experience of the numerous contributors, who bring to its production detailed and personal knowledge of the different aspects of the peptic-ulcer problem, all of which cannot be possessed by any one individual. It loses by an unevenness of construction and by an almost unavoidable duplication and internal contradiction. It is, for example, difficult to see why practising physicians and surgeons (for whom the book is designed) should require detailed instruction on how to pass a tube into the stomach, and it is disconcerting to find in one chapter the forthright statement that duodenal ulcers do not cause the hypersecretion that accompanies them, while in the next the hypersecretion is attributed to interference with the normal mechanism for the control of gastric secretion, produced by the presence of the ulcer. Such criticism, however, does not destroy the usefulness of the book; it merely serves as a warning of the necessity of reading it selectively and critically. Many of the chapters provide full and balanced reviews of their subjects and some cut through a confused literature to present clear and concise conclusions-for instance, the chapters on the relation between experimentally produced ulcers and the disease in humans and on the mechanism of ulcer pain. It is unfortunate that the American Gastroenterological Association's publication should come so soon after Ivy, Grossman, and Bachrach's monograph, also entitled Peptic Ulcerparticularly when the quarter of a century following the publication of Hurst and Stewart's Gastric and Duodenal Ulcer had seen no other major review of the subject. Comparison of the present book with Ivy's is inevitable. It is my view that the unity and consistently critical attitude of Ivy's book make his the more generally useful book of reference. RIcHARD DOLL.