Introduction to Physiology

Abstract

PHYSIOLOGY is a subject covering such a wide range of interests, and involving so many other branches of science, that teachers of it tend to have their own individual ways of approach. Most of them, after trying various ways of introduction to the subject, end up by considering, first, what that great teacher of physiology, Sir Michael Foster, called the ‘master tissues' of the body, the muscles and the nerves. Prof. W. H. Newton, when he comes to deal with the different systems, also adopts this order ; but his approach is refreshingly individual. He begins with an interesting chapter on "The Fire of Life" and passes on to a study of the control of temperature in the body, before he deals with the nerves, from the double aspect of the mechanism of nervous activity and organisation of the nervous system, and with the muscles, which he considers from a wide point of view under the heading ‘movement'.

Introduction to Physiology

By Prof. W. H. Newton. Pp. 284. (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1948.) 7s. 6d. net.