The Principles of Ante-Natal and Post-Natal Child Physiology: Pure and Applied

Abstract

DR. FELDMAN'S work is a notable addition to the books which deal with physiology. As in them, so in this volume, the reader is impressed by the great change which the past decade has wrought in the content of physiological science, and especially in the predominance of physics, of mathematics, and of chemistry which is so noticeable. Here and there one comes upon pages occupied almost entirely Iith mathematical formulie. Dr. Feldman's book has all these charaacters; but it has also another feature, which is novel: it brings to the study of the physiology of the child (up to puberty) a consideration of the conditions of life which exist before birth, and an evaluation of the effect which the process of birth itself has upon these conditions. It has in this respect and for this reason what one might term a fructifying novelty. It sweeps into the scope of child physiology not only the vital processes of fcetal life, which differ merely in details from those which prevail after birth, but also those of embryonic life, which are so manifestly unlike physiology that we commonly call them “embryology”, as if they were something apart; and it travels still further back towards the origins of things and brings in the physiology of the germ or heredity, which it requires an effort of the mind to associate with physiology at all. With so novel an outlook and so enlarged a sphere, it is impossible that everything should be exact and beyond argument; much must remain for a time uncertain, and theories will abound, and do abound, within the cover of this book. For example, the statement that the normal new-born infant is in a condition resembling acidosis is not by any means secure against attack, as a research by Sehom, made so recently as 1919, shows.

The Principles of Ante-Natal and Post-Natal Child Physiology: Pure and Applied.

By W. M. Feldman. Pp. xxvii + 694 + 6 plates. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920.) Price 30s. net.