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Pediatric Endocrinology, edited by Hubble, is a multi-authored text and as such reflects the unevenness of the contributions. The overall impression is that it is good clinically but deficient scientifically. It is amply illustrated with pictures of patients and x-ray films of generally high quality. The bibliographies at the end of each chapter offer a representative introduction to the pertinent literature.
The chapters on "Endocrine Control of Growth" and "The Hypothalamus and Pituitary Gland" introduce the important concepts and describe most of the interesting clinical variants. Certainly, however, some mention of the sulfation factor would have been appropriate. The description of the physiology of diabetes insipidus is misleading; for example, the blood urea nitrogen value is generally not high, and the efficacy of vasopressin does not depend on intact hypophysial function.
The chapter on the parathyroids was written presumably just before the development of knowledge concerning the active metabolite of