By skillfully combining evaporation and distillation, Barber and Garrod have encompassed within 300-plus highly readable pages an effective current review of antibiotic and chemotherapy of infection. The authors have excluded from consideration the agents used against malaria and most other protozoal infections as well as the helminthiases.
Of the book's two parts, the first concerns description of the drugs per se and their general spectrum of antimicrobial activity. With a format recalling many weightier reference texts, the book gives for each of the major sulfonamides and antibiotics the essential characteristics, including background and discovery, chemical properties, antibacterial activity, mode of action, pharmacology (routes of administration, excretion, and distribution in the body fluids), toxicity and side effects and, finally, comments on their general sphere of clinical application. The authors' long personal experience in the study of antimicrobial drugs shows up well in this section of the book. Few statements are made