Histonomy of the Cerebral Cortex.

At a symposium in New York in 1947, David M. Rioch pointed out that many neurologists (and I am sure he included the present reviewer) were arrested in the Nissl stage. There was undoubtedly some truth in this statement. However, the need to go beyond it was felt by many of us, and what was needed was a quantitative approach and not the vague descriptions with which cytoarchitectural writings abound. It is, therefore, with a sort of relief that we turn to the book by Bok on "The Histonomy of the Cerebral Cortex," for it tries to do just that: lay the groundwork for precise measurements rather than vague descriptions of the cortex. The book is essentially a review of the work that Bok and his school did during the last thirty years in Leiden and in Amsterdam, with a briefer introductory period in Den Dolder. It starts out with