Nutrition and Atherosclerosis

This is the second monograph concerned with atherosclerosis from the Medical Research Institute of Michael Reese Hospital. Like the first, its value rests especially in the list of references—a nearly complete register of the scientific literature dealing with atherogenesis to the middle of 1958; the earlier monograph had carried them as far as 1953. Beyond this catalogue of references the monograph has some serious limitations. The authors tend to be preoccupied with their own publications. This is understandable, but when, as often happens, the authors cite one of their own reviews as a source which is as readily available in its original form I think they do an unscholarly thing. Most scientists will not need these authors for interpreters. The authors begin with a statement of a theory that is, frankly, a corker. It is, in the first place, a monumental problem for grammarians—"the nutritional-metabolic cholesterol-lipid-lipoprotein theory of atherogenesis." This