Circulation of the Blood—Men and Ideas Edited by Alfred P. Fishman and Dickinson W. Richards (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS Circulation ofthe Blood—Men and Ideas. Edited by Alfred P. Fishman and Dickinson W. Richards. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. xiv+859. $18.00. "Magnificent" is the word for this beautifully illustrated, finely printed volume on the men and women who since ancient times have made circulatory physiology! The majority ofthe fourteen distinguished authors have gone back to antiquity, to the headwaters of our knowledge, and, following the ever-widening stream, bring us near or up to the present. Servetus walks out ofCournand's chapter "Air and Blood" to discover the pulmonary circulation, later to die at the stake for his unitarian beliefs. William F. Hamilton in his chapter on cardiac output takes us to the laboratory ofthe kind and generous Carl Ludwig , his newly developed kymograph at hand, to hear "the shout ofdelight with which he would greet some new finding." Vesalius' insistence on verifying anatomical fact at the dissecting table, rather than accepting Galen's precept, is documented in Richard Bing's chapter "Coronary Circulation." Physiology comes alive as we hear of the struggles, the successes, and the failures of these and dozens of other pioneers. W. H. Mommaerts presents a scholarly, essentially modern review ofheart muscle. Drs. Louis Katz and Hellerstein begin their discussion of electrocardiography with the early history ofelectricity and end with the micro-electrode in the cardiac muscle fiber. E. M. Landis brings us the perspective ofnearly forty years studying the capillaries, with August and Marie Krogh justifiably looming large. Drs. Heymans and Folkow tell us of Claude Bernard, Brown-Séquard, Cannon, Loewi, and Dale in their "Vasomotor Regulation." Stephen Hales measures the blood pressure of a horse in Sir George Pickering's article on hypertension, from one page ofwhich the keen eyes ofRichard Bright stare out. The story ofhow E. K. Marshall and the late Homer Smith got involved in studying the aglomerular kidney of the goosefish is told by the latter, to whom, most fittingly, this volume is dedicated. Dr. S. E. Bradley writes on the splanchnic circulation, with emphasis on the development of knowledge of the hepatic circulation. Seymour Kety takes us from the Egyptian concepts ofthe brain up to his own development ofthe nitrous oxide method for measuring the cerebral blood flow. Geoffrey Dawes's chapter on the fetal circulation combines historical background with his latest views on this ever-controversial subject. By pointing out where a given topic appears elsewhere in the text, the editors have 134 Book Reviews Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Autumn ic, knit together the wealth ofmaterial. Here is a unique volume, rigorous in its scholarship yet delightful reading for medical students, physicians, and physiologists alike. It is both a modern review ofthe circulation and a history ofits great discoveries. John F. Perkins, Jr. University ofChicago Radiation, Isotopes and Bone. By F. C. McLean and A. M. Budy. New York and London: Academic Press, 1964. This monograph is one in a current series developed through the cooperative efforts of the American Institute ofBiological Sciences and the United States Atomic Energy Commission 's Division ofTechnical Information. The goal ofthis series is specifically to direct attention to biologists' increasing utilization ofradiation and radioisotopes and in general to represent "the new, closer association between the physical and biological sciences" (foreworded by John N. Olive of the AIBS). To a biologist like McLean (who is a physician), this association probablyseems neither new nor closer than it has always been: in 1914 he became one ofthe first to measure the concentration ofblood glucose in man; in 1935 he applied the mass-law equation to interpret the results offrog-heart determinations of the state of calcium in serum; he was one of the first in this country to apply ECG; he worked with Van Slyke in 1915 on the mathematics ofkidney clearance; and recently he has applied such cybernetic terms as "feed-back" in his interpretation of calcium homeostasis. In spite ofhis preoccupation for halfa century with the application of exact measurements to biological problems, it seems rather clear from this book that McLean hardly cares to present physics and biology as closely related fields: it is a matter ofdefinition whether physics and biology are different...