Global Epidemiology—A Geography of Disease and Sanitation. Volume Three, The Near and Middle East

demonstrated the importance of this technic for the identification of steroids. This Atlas represents the important contributions to this field made by the Sloan-Kettering Institute Group, particularly the late Dr. Konrad Dobriner, and Dr. R. Norman Jones originally of Queen's University and now at laboratories of the National Research Council of Canada. As Dr. C. P. Rhoads points out in the introduction, the success of the infrared project which resulted in part in the issue of this Atlas was in part due to cooperation of investigators at the American Cyanamid Company, particularly Dr. R. B. Barnes, as well as Dr. James Hardy of Cornell University Medical College. The publication of this Atlas now places in the hands of all interested investigators the infrared curves of some 306 compounds including a great number of steroids of physiological importance. The bulk of the spectra are of steroid hormones and their metabolites but representative curves of bile acids, steroid sapogenins, cardiac aglycones, and steroid alkaloids are included. The curves are plotted in terms of wave number units and percentage absorption. These plots cannot be superimposed upon transmission recording obtained in individual laboratories. The volume contains short sections on experimental technic and the use of spectra in structural determinations. This latter section might have been profitably expanded. This carefully prepared volume is a valuable contribution to the steroid literature and I am sure copies will be found in all laboratories where studies on the biochemistry of steroids are being done.