A Contribution to the Study of the Blood and Blood pressure

Abstract

IT is to be feared that most medical men who are engaged in the active practice of their profession have little idea of making a practical application of the knowledge of physiology which they were at so great pains to acquire during the student period of their career. There are, however, many exceptions, and prominent amongst them the author of the little work which it is our present purpose to notice. Dr. George Oliver is fortunate in that his sphere of practice has given him leisure during several months in each year to study at length such physiological problems as have appeared to him to bear more directly upon the affections which he has been mainly called upon to treat, and the result of his studies has been a not immaterial addition to our knowledge of the physiology of the circulation and of the blood. Such addition has been obtained largely by the devising of methods which have more immediate applicability to the human subject than those which are in common use in the physiological laboratory. Not that Dr. Oliver has neglected the more strictly scientific study of physiological questions; as is evidenced by his well-known investigations into the functions of the ductless glands. But in the book before us the methods which are described are solely those which, whilst maintaining a high standard of scientific value, have a direct clinical application, and the observations which are given are the results of such application in the normal and occasionally in the abnormal subject, extending over a period of some ten years. A Contribution to the Study of the Blood and Blood pressure. By George Oliver Pp. xii + 276. (London: H. K. Lewis, 1901.) Price 7s. 6d.