PURPOSES 



The main purpose of the Physiological Reviews is to furnish a means 

 whereby those interested in the physiological sciences may keep in touch 

 with contemporary research. The literature, as every worker knows, is so 

 extensive and scattered that even the speciaHst may fail to maintain contact 

 with the advance along different hnes of his subject. The obvious method 

 of meeting such a situation is to provide articles from time to time in which 

 the more recent literature is compared and summarized. The abstract 

 journals render valuable assistance by condensing and classifying the hter- 

 ature of individual papers, but their function does not extend to a comparative 

 analysis of results and methods. Pubhcations such as the Ergebnisse der 

 Physiologie, the Harvey Lectures, etc., that attempt this latter task, have 

 been so helpful as to encourage the behef that a further enlargement of such 

 agencies will be welcomed by all workers. It is proposed, therefore, to 

 estabhsh a journal in which there will be pubhshed a series of short but com- 

 prehensive articles dealing with the recent literature in Physiology, using 

 this term in a broad sense to include Bio-chemistry, Bio-physics, Experi- 

 mental Pharmacology and Experimental Pathology. 



An adequate journal of this nature should appeal strongly to: 



1. Teachers in the underlying medical sciences, because it will enable 

 them to correlate their teaching with research in their own or neighboring 



subjects. 



2. Clinicians who in their multitudinous duties find it well nigh unpos- 

 sible to consult original sources. In the teaching clinic and in medical 

 practice the scientific man will wish to have available critical surveys of 

 modern experimental research as a guide and stimulus to his work. 



3. Laboratory workers who require inventories of the results of 

 science from time to time, which may serve as stepping stones to new investi- 

 gations. 



CHARACTER 



The Editorial Board will select subjects and assign them to authors. 

 This procedure will insure a balanced treatment directed to topics which 

 are of special import at the tune. The articles will contain complete bibho- 

 graphical Usts and will be as short as the material under treatment will 

 allow. Thus it is estimated that the first volume will contain twenty articles 

 averaging twenty-five pages each. The character and scope of these articles 

 may be judged by the contents of Volume I. 



