CEREBRAL ORGANIZATION

New Pathways in Cellular Pathology. By Gordon Roy Cameron, M.B., D.Sc.(Melb.), F.R.C.P., F.R.S. (Pp. 90+ vii; illustrated. 16s.) London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. 1956. This slim volume of 88 pages and eight short chapters is an expansion into a monograph of two lectures given by the author, one in Leeds in 1954, the other in Dublin in the following year. The book serves as an excellent and remarkably stimulating introduction to the author's authoritative treatise on the pathology of the cell. He is the leader of a group of scientific optimists who found themselves "dissatisfied and often discouraged by the morphological outlook on cellular pathology" and "turned to recent biochenmical and biophysical techniques" which they hoped " might illuminate " some of their difficulties. They have been "encouraged to go on with increasing hope." The following are some of the modern techniques they have used: (1) The study of cell respiration in organ and tissue homogenates and in organ slices; (2) differential centrifugation of the disrupted cell at speeds reaching several hundred thousand times gravity; (3) investigation of the enzymatic potencies of each cell constituent-for example, the mitochondria, in which more than 20 enzyme systems have already been identified; (4) electron photomicrography of excessively thin slices of cells at a magnification exceeding 90,000 diameters; (5) autoradiography. These new techniques ruthlessly reduce conventional morphology to the molecular level and produce valid evidence about cell function. For example, each of the millions of leaf-like laminae which can be seen crossing the long axis of the suitably magnified mitochondria have the same size as a molecule of succinoxidase, an enzyme which occurs exclusively in these organelles. The author warns us that the application of these new disciplines to pathology is fraught with disappointments " which will daunt the courage of the most intrepid voyager," but " it would be wrong to despair even though discovery often means one step forward and two steps backward." In spite of this he is able to describe with uncanny accuracy and precision the intracellular biochemical lesions which many injuries produce, to account for functional cellular failure, and to locate this at the cell membrane or in a particular cell organelle. The effect on cell function of poisons such as thioacetamide, carbon tetrachloride, fluoracetic acid, o-dinitrocresol, Clostridium welchii toxin, and lewisite are pin-pointed at the molecular level, and infinitely more satisfying reasons than simple morphological change are adduced for the manifestation of copper deficiency in cattle, vitamin-B, deficiency, cloudy swelling, hydropic degeneration, fatty degeneration, calcification, and proteinuria. Professor Cameron's book is a challenge to the complacent attitude of the conventional pathologist. He appeals for recruits to this new scientific discipline in these words: " My one purpose is to talk to you about the way we are working and thinking in the hope that you, too, may share the excitement of exploring new pathways in cellular pathology," and " if I can entice the reader to set his imagination to work in designing this new world, then I shall have succeeded in my task." GEOFFREY HADFIELD.