This book will tell you almost all you want to know about calcium metabolism. The combined effort of two internists, a pediatrician, and a chemical pathologist, each of whom has worked in this field, it is a heavily referenced, amply illustrated, straightforward treatise on a complex subject.
After a short description of bone as a tissue, the matter of the supply and transport of calcium is taken up, followed in turn by discussions of parathyroid hormone, thyrocalcitonin, and vitamin D. The various metabolic diseases of bone are then considered one by one, together with the appropriate diagnostic tests and treatment. There are discussions of inborn errors affecting bone, of magnesium and phosphorus metabolism, nephrocalcinosis, the various forms of resistant rickets, the effects of hormones on bone metabolism, and of the infantile hypercalcemic syndrome. The coverage is wide, but the field is so vast that the discussion of each topic must