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This volume is printed in the U.S.S.R. and comes from the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine at Leningrad. The author, formerly a student under Pavlov, is Director of the Department of Patho-Physiology at the Institute. In the bibliography of works from his own laboratory he lists over 125 original papers by more than 50 workers. These articles, which represent the foundation of the book, have been published for the most part in Russian journals. The quantity of experimentation reported is overwhelming, the technical description inadequate, the development of the author's thesis enthusiastic, the conclusions startling.
Speransky's novel method of research reverses the usual procedure: instead of studying the disease as an entity, he uses it to study the physiological responses of the organism. He finds that the nervous system plays the cardinal rôle in these processes. The conditions and forms of nervous dystrophic processes are extensively investigated by the use of "pumping", i.e., withdrawing and re-introducing the cerebrospinal fluid 6–10 times, in connection with his experiments. This procedure breaks down the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier and acts as a mild trauma, or irritant, to the central nervous system. It also speeds up dystrophic phenomena and gives consistent results, thereby making possible the author's types of experimentation.
Speransky is led to the conclusion that the nervous system is not only drawn into infectious and traumatic disease processes but itself organizes the external manifestations. Thus the clinical picture results from a dystrophic process within the nervous system, instituted by the original trauma or infection but thenceforth proceeding as an independent function.
One of his most important discoveries arose in connection with those animals which were not much affected by the original experiment. He found that when these were subjected to a "second blow", e.g., a later irritation at a region remote from that