Myxomatosis

The Nobel Lectures delivered by the laureates at the ceremonies held each December in Stockholm have hitherto appeared in the Nobel Foundation's annual publication Les Prix Nobel. They are now being republished in separate volumes for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. The lectures in the three scientific fields will each cover three volumes, and the present volume contains the lectures given in physiology or medicine in the years 1922-41. In fact, no lectures were given in 1940 and 1941 owing to the war and the volume finishes with Domagk's account of the chemotherapy of bacterial infections in 1939. Each lecture is preceded by the presentation speech in which the laureate was introduced and each is followed by his biography. These biographies, which are up to date to the end of 1964, are of great interest. It is a sad comment on our times that Otto Loewi should have had to flee his homeland, that Szent-Gydrgyi should have left Hungary because he had been actively antiNazi, and that Domagk's mother should have died from starvation in a refugee camp. These volumes are a massive contribution to medical history. So rapid is the pace of research that events like the design of the string galvanometer, or the treatment of general paralysis with malaria, or the discovery of the human blood groups already seem lost in the mists of time. But here they are, recounted by men with whom many readers of this journal to-day were familiar. The book is beautifully produced and will be a valuable source book for all who are interested in the origins of the current revolution in physiology and medicine.