Handbuch der mikroskopischen Anatomie des Menschen.

Plenk, in his admirable chapter on the stomach, acknowledges much help from the preliminary work done on it by Josef Lehner. Proceeding from the relations as found in man, he considers the homologies of the various regions of the stomach in different vertebrates, with particular emphasis on mammals. Such comparative data are essential for the interpretation of experimental work and help to differentiate fundamental from incidental conditions. Occasionally they illustrate general principles. Thus, the presence of striated muscle throughout the gastro-intestinal tract of certain fishes shows that the difference between smooth and striated muscle is essentially a physiologic and not a morphologic one. New data are presented on the histogenesis of the stomach in man and on its regenerative capacities. The critical discussion of the histophysiology of the cell types in the gastric glands is in agreement with the recent exposition by Bensley. The small number of normal human gastric