The University of Chicago Press offered Dack's book six years ago as the first compilation of a class of etiologically scrambled diseases in which intestinal absorption of poisons, usually bacterial, appears to be the common factor. The book is now revised at many points, none radically, all sufficiently so that readers can be assured that they have recent points of view.
The author's refusal to become overenthusiastic on any phase or participate in the dogma of such bacteriologic Frankensteins as the Salmonella group does him credit. It is still uncertain whether only live Salmonella can cause food poisoning; in fact, laboratory experiments tend to prove otherwise. The weight of expressed epidemiologic opinion, however, appears against an enteric toxin acting without infection. The acute toxic symptoms and frequent short period of incubation remain more than suggestive of intoxication, and, with Salmonella common in eggs, poultry, slaughterhouses and rodents, the infrequency of