TREATISE ON SURGICAL INFECTIONS

by F. L. Meleney '10. Oxford UniversityPress, New York, 1948, 713 pp., $12.00.

After observing, studying, investigating and experimenting in the clinic and laboratory for thirty years, Frank Lamont Meleney now presents his pioneering work in this truly monumental volume on surgical infections and inflammations. Eminently qualified in bacteriology and surgery, he has exemplified the essential links of coordination between basic science, the preclinical laboratory, the operating room, and the surgical patient. Having consecrated himself to maintaining high standards of sterile technique, to the elucidation of the bacteriological problems of surgery, and to tile understanding of the principles of the natural course of surgical infections, he has made these the objectives of his book.

It may not be appropriate to record in this non-technical review the specific details of the chapters, but it should be said that this scientific as well as scholarly and historical presentation is destined to become regarded as a classic in medical schools, hospitals, and in the bacteriological and surgical world in general, for in the words of Allen O. Whipple, "since Lister's time no surgeon has studied so intensively and has made so many original contributions to the subject of the bacteriology of infection and inflammation requiring surgical therapy as has Doctor Meleney in the past twenty-five years."