The Borderland of Embryology and Pathology

Those who have felt concern over the increasing pressures to dispense with comparative anatomy and embryology as requirements for admission to medical school will find no comfort in this book. For over 600 pages the author documents various problems in medicine which are explained at least in part by an understanding of embryology. The author assumes only a modest knowledge of embryology on the part of the reader and devotes the opening chapters to a description of the early development of the human embryo and the structure and function of embryonic tissues as well as some of the more recent contributions of experimental embryology. He then discusses malformations, indicating the importance of developmental arrest and differential susceptibility in the various types. Both environmental and genetic causes are considered before showing the relations of malformations to various clinical conditions, many of which are not commonly realized to have an embryonic basis,