Researches on Pre-Natal Life

Abstract

THIS book is the first of its kind ; it may be described as a work on physiological ontogeny : that is to say, it deals with the development of function in the progress of fætal life. Moreover, it keeps in view throughout, not only the intra-uterine conditions under which the fætus lives and grows, but the fact that the fætus will eventually pass out into the world and in such a state that it can respond successfully to its new environment. The book deals mainly with investigations by the author himself and his colleagues and pupils in the Schools of Physiology and Agriculture in Cambridge. It does not claim to be a text-book on the subject, and so does not include such work as has been done in other centres like that on the initiation of the heart beat carried out at the Johns Hopkins University. Nevertheless, it covers very considerable ground, and the relevant papers by other investigators are duly quoted. The researches were mostly upon the fætal sheep, and it is impossible to refrain from an expression of admiration for the ingenuity of the investigator and for the results which he obtained, especially when one bears in mind the great difficulty that must have been experienced in dissecting fætal lambs so as to preserve any considerable degree of normality. Wherever possible the author has correlated his observations and those of others so as to give a connected story of the physiological events studied. But he very wisely does not always attempt this, and at the beginning of the chapter on the oxygen capacity, he says frankly that he decided to record a series of unconnected observations rather than to arrange them under some hypothetical scheme. For here, as in other parts of the book, the facts are not only interesting but also beautiful in themselves, and need no scientific hypothesis to make them more so.

Researches on Pre-Natal Life

By Sir Joseph Barcroft. Vol. 1. Pp. xiii + 292. (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, Ltd., 1946.) 37s. 6d. net.