The reviewer feels that the author has achieved his purpose extremely well. The book is very readable, gives a good picture of the field and would enable anyone interested t o delve deeper into the field. The illustrations. descriptions, and explanations hold the reader's interest throughout. I t can be recommended to those unfamiliar with the field hut who wish t o know about the methods of solvent recovery in use in industry today. A. A. VERNON
of the vitamins known today." and the book as a whole indicates strongly that he thinks of the vitamins rather as commodities than as natural food constituents. He includes no specific data on vitamin values of foods and his generalizations on this subject seem designed to make the reader entirely distrustful of foods as suurces of vitamins. More space is given to the occurrence and ~ossiblefunctions of vitamins in nature. and i t is doubtless this material which is decmed to justify inriuding physiology in thc title of the book. But in the opinion of the prrwnt reviewers the nutritional and other phydoloRical aspects are rrearcd unevenly and not in a way to inspire confidence that the knowledge available has been handled with a firm grasp, though the author's apMODERNTREORIES OP ORGANICCHEMISTRY. H. B. Wat~on parent greater familiarity with European writings than with D. Se. (Wales), F. I . C. Second Edition. The Clarendon American scientific literature permits him to enliven some of the Press, Oxford, England, 1941. viii f 267 pp. 14.5 X 23 cm. physiological dixussions with speculations relatively unfamiliar $4.00. to US. Both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of Dr. RoseuRecent mathematical and physical advances have found important applications in the general field of chemistry. "In this berg's discussions of human requirements for the different vitavolume an attemot is made t o oresent the modern viemoint in mins are, in our opinion, disappointing and a t some points cona concise and simple farm, and t o show how the new conceptions fusing or misleading. On the qualitative side, the scales do not have followed logically from the earlier views. A brief and very seem to us to be heldeven as between, for example, vitamin Baand elementary account of the physical foundations of the subject is para-aminobenzoic acid; while the whole quantitative side of the foUowed by the development of the main theme of the book, yie., consideration of human requirements sufkrs greatly from failure the application of electronic theory to the reactions of organic to include the Recommended Allowances of the Committee on compounds, and by a description of some of the better known Food and Nutrition (now Food and Nutrition Board) of the phenomena (such as addition and substitution reactions, tauto- National Research Council, although these were published early meric changes, molecular rearrangements, and the stability of in 1941. I n addition to such unevenness as might naturally be expected free radicals) in terms of modern ideas. An account of some of when a single author endeavors to handle such a large and rapthe recent developments in stereochemistry is also included." idly growing literature, the reader must also be on guard against errors and inconsistencies. Thus nitiogen appears twice as biCHEMISTRY AND PnusromGY or THE VITAMINS. H. R. ROSCII- valent: on page 123 where N has been put in the place of S in berg, Sc.D. Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York. New the structural formula of thiamin, and on page 180 through typographical omission of a bond. On page 100, one gram of thiamin York, 1942. xix 674 pp. 25 figs. 15 X 23 cm. $12.00. is said to equal over 3,000,000 International Units. The equivaThe very broad scope of the author's ambition for this volume lent in International Units for one gram of vitamin A is given as is indicated by the following condensation of its table of contents: 4,500,000 on pages 57 and 60, and as 3,320,000 an page 75. The The vitamins A, BI, "B," (ribokvin), Basnicotinic acid and nicastatement on page 92. repeated on page 93, that nightblindness is tinamide, pantothenic acid, inositol, para-aminnhenzoic acid, the earliest symptom of vitamin A deficiency should, we think, be vitamin C, the vitamins D, the vitamins E, vitamin H (biotin), somewhat qualified or explained. Also, on page 190, the statethe vitamins K, and vitamin P, are discussed each in a separate ment: "Growth of young rats ceases as soon as the diet is vitachapter under the same general outline of topics: "nomenclamin BI-deficient." In some cases references cited do not couture and survey," chronology, occurrence, isolation, properties, tain the information attributed (examples on pages 198 and 199) chemical constitution, synthesis, industrial methods of preparaThis book is undoubtedly the fullest available summary of the tion, biogenesis, specificity, determination, standards, physiology chemical development of synthetic vitamins as articles t o he patof plants and micro6rgauisms, animal physiology, avitaminosis ented, manufactured, and sold, but its attempted pronounceand hypovitaminosis, hypervitaminosis, and requirements. ments outside of that field are, in the opinion of the present reFollowing, there is a chapter on some seventeen %on-identihed viewers, often disappointing and sometimes distinctly misleading. vitamins"; and an appendix dealing with the so-called "vitagem," The author exaggerates his distrust of foods as sources of vitamins substances having in common with the vitamins that they "are to the verge of self-contradiction in the statement (page 34) that required for normal growth and maintenance of life of animals, "the normal food of the average man in most countries is devoid including man, who, as a rule are unable t o synthesize (them) of many vitamins." This can hardly be attributed solely to . ."; but which fail t o satisfy all of the stipulations included in language difficulty with the word "devoid." for there are too Rosenberg's 83-word definition of vitamins in that they either many other indications that Dr. Rosenberg would have his readact as suppliers of energy or serve as structural building units. ers chconically distrust the vitamin values of f d s . Nearly one-tenth of the volume is occupied by the author index He aeneralizes hroadlv and ~essimisticallvon natural variaand the subject index; and a section of equal length is devoted tions and lasses in cookine careful evalua, a t~~~~~~~~~" without anv attemot to an index of United States and foreign patents dealing with tion of the evidence as to the categories in which there variations vitamins. are relatively lnrgeand those in whirh they are relativrly anall. The structural chemistry of the vitamins and the synthetic steps leading t o industrial production a r e treated quite fully. The author introduces himself in the preface as having been "connected a t some time or other with the development of many
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