This text of general pathology aims to provide a basis for understanding human disease. Dr. McManus concentrates on morphology and, to a lesser extent, biochemistry. Certainly, morphological methods are most helpful in studying some diseases, but others are better understood by the methods of physiology, immunology, or the clinical metabolic laboratory. This volume is most successful where morphological approaches shed most light on the disease, least successful when they do not.
The first section gives an excellent description of pathology at the cellular level. The chapter on cell structure and function is done particularly well. Descriptions and illustrations seem clear, well edited, and appropriate to student needs. Equally good is the chapter on differentiation, metaplasia, and neoplasia. The section on experimental carcinogenesis, particularly the biochemical changes, could have been expanded considerably.
In discussing "degenerations," the author defines the term as "catabolic alterations which are reversible and do not lead consistently