This book leaves the reader in some doubt as to whether it is intended to promote the health resorts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or to extol the October Socialist Revolution. It consists mainly of descriptions of various health resorts in the different autonomous Soviet Republics. These descriptions are almost purely promotional; one searches in vain for true scientific evaluation. For example, with respect to the resort Akhtala, one of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic's resorts, occur the following quotations, which are typical of the book:
Exuding from the hills, with a temperature of about 23°, the Akhtala muds have been found to consist of water and solid substances among which plastic clay predominates. The aqueous component of the mud is basically sodium chloride water, also containing carbonates of sodium, calcium, magnesium and so on, its mineralization totaling 16.5 Gm. per liter.
Akhtala mud is administered both in