The Neural Control of Sweating.

In an era when electrodermal reactions and their significance are of concern not only to research in neurology, psychology, audiology, and psychiatry, but to the Congress of the United States, a physiological analysis is timely. Dr. Wang has been a productive investigator in this field for over 30 years, and this book represents a summary of his more recent experiments concerned with central mechanisms in the cat. He describes spontaneous electrodermal activity, its modifications by peripheral and central stimulation, by anesthesia, and by destructive lesions at several levels of the central nervous system. The durations of chronicity are varied. Stimulation and anesthesia studies are also reported on some chronic preparations. Eleven higher CNS centers for sweating result from his analysis. These are alternatively excitatory, inhibitory, or regulatory. This gratuitous treatment of the nervous system as if it were a collection of on and off switches seems to this reviewer to