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Medicine and Books

It is a tribute to the integrity of the editors that in their preface they should have recorded in such painful detail the problems that they encountered with their contributors. They imply, perhaps a little ungratefully, that they had to make do with "second-choice" authors for some of the chapters in this large and handsome volume, and admit that a number of important topics had to be excluded because suitable contributors could not be recruited without unacceptable delay. Another problem was that some of the authors did not meet their original deadlines, and publication of the book had to be delayed. Naturally, this was not to the liking of the other authors, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade the editors to print the dates on which their contributions had been submitted, so that they would not be criticised personally if it were out of date by the time the book was published. In fact, none of the chapters dealing with the basic concepts of pulmonary structure and function can be faulted on that score, because in these subjects there have been few developments of major importance in the past year or two. The same is true of most of the other chapters, except on points of detail. Nevertheless, because of the preface, it was difficult to read this book without being preoccupied with a morbid curiosity to identify the chapters written by the authors recruited later than those originally invited to contribute (by scanning the dates of the references), and to discover by a process of elimination which important topics had to be omitted from the text. Similar editorial problems must, of course, be common in all scientific books of multiple authorship, especially when there are contributors from all over the world, but these are the natural hazards of almost every literary work of this kind. Avoidance of such hazards demands a degree of ruthlessness which few editors are willing or able to exercise. Yet there must be many bright young clinical scientists who would be eager to contribute to a prestigious publication, and who in their own interests could be relied on to deliver their contributions promptly. Some of the most stimulating and up-to-date chapters in this particular book, such as that by Dr Peter Cole on immunity deficiency states, were obviously written by relatively junior authors, and the editors may now regret having not included more of them in their original roll of contributors.