Harvey Cushing, Surgeon, Author, Artist

ELEMENTS OF HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY. By Miriam Scott Lucas. Philadelphia, Lea & Febiger, 2d edition, 1950. 357 pp. $4.75. The second edition of this college text of human physiology shows very little change from the first edition. Despite the statement in the preface that the section on the nervous system is completely rewritten, there seems to have been no rewriting at all of this section, but merely a moderate rearrangement involving the bodily transposition of entire paragraphs. This is about the extent of any of the revisions of the text in the entire book. Of the only two real changes in this edition one is of a regressive nature, one is progressive, neither is very spectacular. The regressive change concerns the color plates of the first edition, all but two of which have shed their color, appearing in this edition in their primitive black-and-white. The other modification is the addition of references to additional reading, nonexistent in the first edition, at the ends of chapters. These bibliographies, however, are still in their infancy, being neither extensive nor particularly well selected. Such an obvious choice, for instance, as Fulton's Physiology of the Nervous System is omitted. The coverage of topics is nominally large, but the actual treatment of most topics is quite brief, being either a broad, non-detailed account of the subject, or a fairly detailed exposition made compact through lack of logical development. The physical aspects of the book-binding, format, paper, printing, and illustrations-are all excellent. In fact, the 158 illustrations, mostly selected from the standard texts of anatomy, histology, and physiology, are the most satisfactory, albeit unoriginal, feature of this text.