Out of his numerous contributions to the Country Gentleman, the Ladies Home Journal and the newspapers, de Kruif has assembled these sketches. The series of volumes which have brought his name before the American people as the interpreter of science for the average man now includes "Microbe Hunters," "Hunger Fighters," "Seven Iron Men," "Men Against Death" and "Why Keep Them Alive?"
The present volume is largely concerned with maternal and infant welfare, the heat treatment for disease, infantile paralysis, tuberculosis and syphilis. De Kruif still writes with the fire that characterized his first book. He must, by this time, have seen the impossibility of fulfilment of many of the promises he made in his earlier articles. Once he seemed to think that with artificial pneumothorax tuberculosis could be overcome. More recently he seemed quite convinced that nasal spraying would prevent the transmission of infantile paralysis on a large scale. He