Color Atlas of Histology

Abstract

A text that has sustained five editions over 18 years is clearly doing something right. Gartner and Hiatt have clearly created a successful format for their well-established atlas of histology. The structural organization of the book is one the authors have obviously found effective, and although other arrangements would be possible, the table of contents and index make navigation easy. Conventional histological photomicrographs (the majority of the illustrations) are in general clear, well annotated and well labelled. The generous allocation of electron micrographs is also a plus point. These are the raw data from which interpretations of structure are developed. Notably absent, however, are any photomicrographs of immunohistochemistry specimens – these could effectively illustrate aspects of tissue homeostasis, e.g. the separation of proliferation and differentiation in the gut mucosa, or the location of B- and T-cell zones in lymph nodes. The provision of histophysiological information faces the inevitable challenge of how much to provide, which will often be thought too little or too much. For example, the description of gastric acid secretion (pages 292 and 296) did not present a clear picture of communication between neurons, D cells, G cells, and enterochromaffin-like cells via their secretions (acetylcholine, gastrin, somatostatin, histamine) in determining gastric acid secretion by the parietal cells. Clinical correlations are likewise brief but do usefully serve to remind students of the medical context. The use of highlights to emphasize form in the paintings of tissue structure in 3D is a useful device but occasionally slightly disconcerting, as with a fibroblast on page 58 and an adipocyte on page 60, which look like pictures of plastic models. This apparent artificiality can of course be justified on the grounds that we are looking at depictions of ideas rather than things in a form in which they could actually be observed in life, so there is no harm in being reminded of that artifice. Apropos of this, some illustration via examples of how the essentially two-dimensional world of the conventional histological and EM sections are generalized to the 3D interpretations presented here (and of how challenging that can be) might have been valuable. The ring binding, while economical and functional, is not attractive. I was struck by the contrast with the robust library binding of a 50-year-old histology text by Springer that I recently unbound for scanning: but the past and its economic realities is another country, and durability is less important for a book that is regularly updated to take account of new information. The book is directed at students in the biomedical arena; they are most likely to be undergraduates, but the book but would be equally useful for postgraduate students and other more senior investigators. Its visual appeal is strong, which will suit those to whom microscopy and histology come naturally as well as providing an aid to those who find it more difficult to form a mental picture of tissue organization. The book comes with online supplementary materials including extra photomicrographs and questions. Unfortunately, several attempts to access this material using different web browsers (Safari and Firefox) under Mac OSX were unsuccessful. Perhaps Windows users might have better luck.