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This volume is an excellent introduction to the problems, technique, and interpretation of clinical blood pressure readings. The seven chapters present the following topics: (1) historical review of instruments used to measure blood pressure; (2) the physiology of arterial pressure; (3) the clinical measurement of arterial pressure; (4) sources of error in measurement; (5) factors affecting arterial pressure levels; (6) normal values; and (7) diagnostic applications of arterial pressure measurements.
Unusually rigorous selection of material was used in the brief discussion of the "physiology" of blood pressure. Perhaps for this reason the chapter seems the least successful in the book. The authors are eminently qualified to write on this topic; less compressed exposition at this point would have improved their book. In the same chapter the "vasomotor center" is said to be in the midbrain (p 46) rather than in the medulla, a misstatement that is obviously a slip of