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The place of a volume such as this in the library of practicing pediatricians is, alas, probably about that of the Summa or the Babylonian Talmud on the shelves of a dealer in recap tires. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the exacting techniques of comparative biochemistry and methods elsewhere designated "elegant" have made available information only suggested by Hecht, Granit, and Wald 20-25 years ago. The fields of neuro-ophthalmology and neurophysiology are perhaps benefited more by the strange marriage of electron microscopy and old-fashioned three-dimensional reconstruction more than most other fields in the burgeoning green land of mid-20th century biology.
The physiology of vision has remained the miscegenetic offspring of physics and neurology, and, to this writer, among the most enjoyable sections in this volume are those dealing with retinal synaptology, the philosophy of retinal duality, and a "new" approach to rod and cone function. As is customary in