This book consists of a most learned and scholarly account of the various conceptions of disease throughout the ages, with particular reference to the various factors contributing to the different concepts in each culture. The width and vision of the problem is perhaps high-lighted for the psycho-analyst in Dr. Riese's discussion of disease as an essential concomitant of human development, in the sense of disease being so often a complex expression of our real limitations. It is only when disease is thus accepted that further true development is possible. What is most to be avoided, as the author demonstrates, is any prolonged attempt to deny that we are only what we are.