As testimony to the ever increasing role played by immunology in the practice of medicine, a number of books has recently appeared designed to explain fundamental immunologic concepts to the clinician. The latest of this series, Clinical Concepts of Immunology, edited by Robert H. Waldman, MD, professor of medicine at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown, is one of the most useful. In a brief 250 pages of text, Dr Waldman and his 20 collaborators have managed to cover the most relevant aspects of medical immunology.
The authors chose to eschew the usual systematic approach to immunology, eg, immunologic disorders of the endocrines, of the gastrointestinal tract, and of the skin, for an organization based on mechanisms of immunologic damage and their attendant disorders. Following a brief overview of the immune system, there are major sections devoted to cellmediated immunity and humoral immunity. Each of these sections begins