Why Men Behave Like Apes and Vice Versa

561 Plague On Us can not but make for humility, for it shows us that when accounts are balanced there seems, despite all those things which we believe medical science has accomplished, to be a deficit of major proportions. "We have not rid the world entirely of any single infection known to man, and some we have not yet begun to fight. As for the premises for action, we do not yet know why one man sickens and the next goes free, why one pest seeks out the lungs and another the liver, how drugs cure the ills they seem to cure, how disease begins or how it ends." But this is not pessimism run wild, nor is it a denial of all accomplishment; rather, it is an appeal for a solution to the questions of the why and the how, a demand that the words we glibly offer in explanation have some meaning. Throughout those sections of the text dealing with contagion, parasites, infection, and defense mechanisms, the unsolved problem runs like a minor theme,-"we do not yet know," "we cannot tell," "we have not found the formula." All of which is true, as is also the conclusion that "we cannot hope to learn what we need to know about communicable disease without knowing more about the body that has it-and the body that throws it off." Pointedly, the author adds: "The story of the people who do not fall sick has never been told. Perhaps it is the most important part of epidemiology." With these words ends this fair appraisal of our ability to cope with pesti-lence. Intervening chapters tell tales, each with a moral, of Methodist ladies, wading boys, ladylike oysters, etc. It is pertinent to point out that this text, designed for laymen, is likely to receive its widest attention from those who can not be so classed. Indeed, it deserves their attention, for to all of those who must, or should, play a part in the control of plagues the story here told merits thought. And it is a story well told. The contents of this book are based almost entirely on the Vanuxem lectures which the author delivered at Princeton University in 1940. As additions to the text numerous excellent photographs of the lower primates add to the attractiveness of the volume. Those familiar with previous writings of the author will recall a literary …