This book is a splendid review of renal disease written for medical students, practitioners, and those confining their practice to diseases of the kidney. The text is well written and clearly illustrated. It is divided into five sections, each of which is a chapter.
The first chapter is devoted to physiology and anatomy of the kidney. The section on physiology discusses in detail the theories of urine formation, excretion of organic substances, electrolyte metabolism, acid-base equilibrium, water metabolism, hormonal regulations, etc. Keeping abreast of late advances, the author also has included the recent theories concerning the mechanism of urine concentration proposed by Wirz (so-called counter-current-distribution theory).
The second chapter deals mostly with diagnostic methods. Simple urinalyses; determinations of individual constituents of the blood plasma; specific renal-function tests, including clearance methods and their interpretations, as well as radiological diagnosis and renal biopsy, are discussed in detail.
In the last three chapters