Abstract
Mr. Negus presents here the results of his extensive inquiries into the form and function of the larynx. They range over the vertebrate kingdom from Lepidosiren paradoxa to man, and no detail of the structure of the forms examined seems to have escaped from thorough and fruitful consideration. The work is elaborate and, as a sustained effort in comparative anatomy and physiology applied to a field which is restricted but of wide interest, exemplary. In an introduction of great generosity and good humour, Sir Arthur Keith remarks that the author has the same patient power of assembling observation as Darwin had, and the same hot pursuit of function as urged John Hunter in all his quests. If these comparisons should induce a certain negativism in the attitude of some readers, the book will dispel it. Of nearly 500 pages of reading matter, there are few which do not serve as a vehicle for some point of interest, and, if the general reader were forearmed with such a knowledge of laryngeal structure as may be obtained from an hour's dissection and ten minutes' reading, he would find this work of science more interesting than most books about science. For the specialist it will endure as a major treatise. It includes under one cover as large, if not a larger body of facts than the usual specialist compilation, but in addition it casts fresh light upon problems too numerous to particularise in a short notice.
The Mechanism of the Larynx.
V. E. Negus. Pp. xxx + 528. (London: William Heinemann (Medical Books), Ltd., 1929.) 45s. net.
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Our Bookshelf. Nature 126, 537 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126537a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126537a0
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