Neurochemical Pharmacology—A Tribute to B.B. Brodie. Fidia Research Foundation Symposium Series. Volume 2

immunologic response to infection. An appropriately brief section discusses the host response to infection, which defines the diseases seen clinically. Another section discusses the prevention and control of infection and disease. A thought-provoking section in each chapter elucidates unresolved epidemiologic and medical problems. Each chapter is extensively referenced-an average of approximately 175 references per chapter, with an additional five to ten general sources provided as suggestions for further reading. Numerous tables and figures supplement the text, and the index is well constructed. The two chapters on viral gastroenteritis (essentially the Norwalk viruses and the rotaviruses) and the retroviruses (HTLV1 and HIV) alternate separate discussion of the two agents in each chapter subsection. These chapters would be more readable if structured as are the other chapters discussing more than one virus (such as the chapters on viral hepatitis and the arenaviruses), by grouping all discussion about each virus together. This text excels in, and is singularly unique in, presentation of the descriptive epidemiology of these viruses and as such is an indispensable source of epidemiology. For students and practitioners of epidemiology and public health, this text is sufficiently comprehensive to serve as a primary teaching and reference resource about human viral infections. For research virologists, clinical laboratory virologists, and infectious diseases specialists, this text is an essential source of epidemiology which complements standard texts of virology and clinical infectious diseases.