PREFACE 



THIS book was designed to set before the student of medicine 

 the progress made in those branches of physiological study which 

 have an immediate bearing on pathology and therapeutics, and 

 to thereby give him an insight into the methods of research, and 

 a training in the processes of deduction, which cannot be gained 

 from the bare and unstimulating outlines of the text-book. In 

 the text-book all branches of physiology are treated as of 

 equal value ; in reality many parts of the science have little 

 bearing on practical medicine, while others are of fundamental 

 importance and cannot be studied too deeply. Some of these 

 latter the Editor and his co-workers have endeavoured to treat 

 in such a manner as to make the student think out problems, 

 rather than to learn facts in a parrot-like way. 



In carrying out this idea each writer has been held re- 

 sponsible for his own views and interpretations of the subject 

 which he has undertaken, and if, as occasionally happens, the 

 writers on cognate subjects have overlapped and differed in their 

 conceptions of the mechanisms involved, the Editor has not 

 sought to remove such differences. It is to the advantage of 

 the student to study such opposed views, and thereby have 

 his powers of criticism and judgment sharpened. 



The Editor hopes that the book will also be of value to the 

 clinician, who wishes to realise the views of the chief European 

 and American authorities on such subjects as diabetes ; uric 

 acid metabolism ; ha3molysins and immunity ; mountain sickness, 

 caisson sickness, and oxygen as a therapeutic agent ; the meta- 

 bolism- of ^ fat 'and treatment of obesity; the influence of tem- 

 perature and relative dryness of the atmosphere, of work, diet, 



