Addison and the White Corpuscles: an Aspect of Nineteenth-century Biology

assessed but on the whole rejected; aspiration was still abjured a century or so later, coming into more general favour only in the latter half ofthe nineteenth century. Dr. Jarcho has made available an admirable review, critical and well documented, of the state of knowledge at the time. Since the understanding of hydrothorax requires an integrated appreciation of the physiology and pathology of the respiratory and circulatory systems, any contemporary account affords insight into the degree of assimilation into clinical concepts and practice of new developments in these areas; in the present treatise, the circulation of the blood, for example, emerges as having had little impact. It is therefore to be hoped that Dr. Jarcho will continue his series of studies on this theme, perhaps through the widely quoted but relatively inaccessible observations of Vieussens and Albertini, to the emergence of modern concepts. Indeed, since Dr. Jarcho himself has so clearly indicated the historical potential of hydrothorax, he has little alternative ! BRYAN GANDEVIA