This book is meant for medical students and others taking a first comprehensive course in physiology. As such it is a reasonably satisfactory work. It treats all the major fields of the subject and gives a great deal of information, though not always with a great deal of critical acumen. For example, it is stated categorically, and a chemical equation is written purporting to show, that the gastric hydrochloric acid is derived from a reaction between sodium chloride and carbonic acid.
A beginning student could scarcely be blamed for interpreting that statement literally. Another example of this type of defect appears in the last chapter, on emotional reactions. Here the ideology of psychoanalysis is freely, and without critical comment, incorporated as physiologic dogma. The assumption, for example, of a "censor" for an extensive subconscious mind is not based on acceptable scientific data and does not deserve unqualified acceptance in a