GUIDE TO STUDY OF HISTOLOGY AND MICROSCOPIC ANATOMY

for the use of students in medical schools and colleges. By Avery E. Lambert 'O2. Philadelphia. P. Blakiston's Son & Co. 1930 ix +262 pages.

In the making of this compact and very useful book, Dr. Lambert has combined his experience as an effective teacher, his technique as a student of histology, and his natural ability to write concise, adequate directions for laboratory work. It is not a book to be read in a comfortable armchair nor even at a study table but in its place on a laboratory bench beside a compound microscope. There it will be appreciated by many a medical and pre-medical student as he works with thin, stained sections of the various tissues and organs of the human body.

The plan and purpose of the book is to outline the complete procedure in the study of the gross and microscopic structure of all the human tissues, glands, systems and organs except the central nervous system. The opening chapters contain many timely suggestions to the student for using his microscope to the best advantage and for making careful drawings of the materials to be studied. Each of the subsequent chapters deals with a natural unit of the subject. In each case the tissue or organ is described briefly and then divided into its component parts for detailed study. The student is told exactly where to look for characteristic features and any special struct ures are oriented and named. He is told just what to draw and what to show in the drawing. In many places there are searching questions which keep him thinking as he works.

Such carefully worded directions are to be ranked among the difficult forms of expository writing and this author has performed the task with his usual skill along this line. As an undergraduate student in several of his classes, I was first introduced to science and the scientific method by way of such written and oral directions and the lines of this book sound very familiar.

As a further aid to rapid and accurate interpretation of the material in the hands of the student, the text is adequately illustrated with over 150 figures made from fully labelled drawings of the various tissues. Many of these appear to be the work of the author himself but a majority were chosen from the best of their kind as used in text books of histology and anatomy. Such drawings can be appreciated only by those who have tried to make them but the ones used here are executed with great detail and care and show the essential structures.