Autonomic Failure: A Textbook of Clinical Disorders of the Autonomic Nervous System.

The last decade has seen an increasing interest in the study of disorders of the autonomic nervous system. For too long, the autonomic nervous system has been regarded by neurologists as a field which might well be worth more interest, but which at the same time was so complicated that no one dared go into it. This situation is now changing; as the editors state in the preface, autonomic units are now to be found in many major hospitals. The knowledge gained in such centres is slowly diffusing into the neurological community. To facilitate this process we need good textbooks that provide clarity and order, the lack of which made the field so inaccessible in the past. The first chapter, on neurobiology of the autonomic nervous system, provides a good example of the differences between what used to be taught about the autonomic nervous system and what is said now: we read that `most target issues react predominantly to only one of the autonomic systems; opposite reactions to activity in sympathetic and parasympathetic neurones are more the exception than …