This report will be mainly of interest to members of the medical profession. 

 The Symposium was held in Magdeburg, East Germany, in October 1964, and 

 was attended by 23 specialists in the field, most of them from East Germany. 



The nine papers discuss a variety of topics concerning the human placenta and 

 fetal membranes, such as morphology, ultrastructure, biochemistry, immunology, 

 infection, permeability, and pathology. Of particular interest is the paper by 

 Pliess on the correlation of placental anomalies and fetal malformations. Several 

 papers have considerable bibliographies, while others give no literature at all. 



The discussions held at the Symposium are also recorded. The book is well- 

 printed and well-illustrated; it has no indexes. 



38 EPITHELIAL-MESENCHYMAL INTERACTIONS 



1968 



Editors: R. Fleischmajer and R. E. Billingham The Williams 6 Wilkins Cy. 

 18th Hahnemann Symposium Baltimore, Md. 



339 pp., 176 figs., 12 tbs. Price: $ 15.75 



Contributors: Abercrombie (London), Auerbach (Madison, Wis.), Billingham (Philadelphia, 

 Pa.), Dawe (Bethesda, Md.), Grobstein (La Jolla. Calif.), Hay (Boston, Mass.), Hilfer (Phila- 

 delphia, Pa.), Holtfreter (Rochester, N.Y.), Holtzer (Philadelphia, Pa.), Kirby (Oxford), Lash 

 (Philadelphia, Pa.), Lippman (Rochester, N.Y.), McLoughlin (London), Moscona (Chicago, 111.), 

 Oliver (Birmingham), Rutter (Seattle, Wash.), Saunders (Philadelphia, Pa.), Van Scott 

 (Bethesda, Md.), Wessells (Stanford, Calif.), Wilde (Philadelphia, Pa.) 



This book contains the 20 papers read at a Symposium (probably) held in 1967 

 in Philadelphia, Pa. It was attended by American and English specialists working 

 on a variety of aspects of the problem outlined in the title. The discussions held at 

 the Symposium are not recorded in the book. 



The first lecture of the Symposium, which sets the scene for the ensuing 

 papers, is by J. Holtfreter, to whom the volume is dedicated ,and is entitled 

 "Mesenchyme and epithelia in inductive and morphogenetic processes" (30 pp.). 



Most of the other papers both review the present state of knowledge in a 

 certain area, and report on recent original work. A few are just brief reviews 

 stating little that is new. The book is extremely rich in content. The coverage is 

 very broad and often transcends the strict limits of the Symposium theme. Thus 

 the following systems, organs and tissues are dealth with in one or more papers: 

 early amphibian embryo, early chick embryo, chick limb bud, embryonic and 

 adult chick and mammalian skin, chick somites (chondrogenesis), chick embryo 

 thyroid, mammalian embryonic pancreas and salivary glands, mammalian tropho- 

 blast, mammalian hematopoiesis and lymphoid regeneration, chick and mam- 

 malian cells in culture, and vibrissa regeneration. One area is conspicuously 

 absent: epithelial-mesenchymal interactions in limb regeneration. This is a pity, 

 since some significant work has been done in this area. 



Naturally almost all papers contain discussions, both theoretical and oper- 

 ational, of mechanisms of induction and inhibition acting in the embryo as well 

 as in later life. Much emphasis is also placed on the role of interface materials. 



The book is very well printed and bound and has excellent illustrations, 

 many of them photomicrographs and electron micrographs. It has an extensive 

 subject index and an index to authors cited. 



34 



