FOREWORD 



a 



ur Living Chemistry Series was conceived by Editor and 

 Publisher to advance the newer knowledge of chemical medicine 

 in the cause of clinical practice. The interdependence of chemistry 

 and medicine is so great that physicians are turning to chemistry, 

 and chemists to medicine in order to understand the underlying 

 basis of life processes in health and disease. Once chemical truths, 

 proofs and convictions become sound foundations for clinical 

 phenomena, key hybrid investigators clarify the bewildering pano- 

 rama of biochemical progress for application in everyday practice, 

 stimulation of experimental research, and extension of postgraduate 

 instruction. Each of our monographs thus unravels the chemical 

 mechanisms and clinical management of many diseases that have 

 remained relatively static in the minds of medical men for three 

 thousand years. Our new Series is charged with the nisus elan of 

 chemical wisdom, supreme in choice of international authors, 

 optimal in standards of chemical scholarship, provocative in 

 imagination for experimental research, comprehensive in discus- 

 sions of scientific medicine, and authoritative in chemical percep- 

 tives of human disorders. 



Dr. Cameron and Dr. Spector of London reveal the chemical 

 spectrum of body reactivity to environmental injury, intrinsic and 

 extrinsic, in its effort to preserve the integrity of the whole organism 

 and of its constituent parts. The chemical approach is a medical 

 milestone in the march of the human mind. Pathology initiated by 

 Morgagni from the structural standpoint in organs, has been 

 studied successively by Bichat in tissues; by Virchow in cells; and 

 now by Cameron and others from the functional viewpoint in mole- 

 cules and submolecules. The sequence of events which constitutes 

 the living response to pathological injury is gradually being eluci- 

 dated while different facets of the clinical picture are being obtained 



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