Recent Advances in Medical Science: By Sir Edward Mellanby. Cambridge: The University Press; New York: The Macmillan Co., 1939. 62 pp.

Delivered originally as the Rede lecture before the University of Cambridge, this treatise aims to indicate the social and economic implications of recent advances in medical science. It opens on a note of optimism, familiar to the idealist, in contrasting the living values inherent in medical research with the destructive aims of military aggression.

Tracing briefly the changing course of scientific emphasis he justifies his optimism with the conclusion that all observable biological phenomena can now be expected to find their interpretation in terms of chemistry.

A brief review of the outstanding advances and discoveries in medical science as illustrated by changing vital statistics is climaxed with the observation that the decrease in death rate in early life is balanced by an increased incidence in the fatal diseases of later life, notably heart disease and cancer. The author suggests that 'some harmful cause of heart disease, and especially of coronary occlusion, probably some mistake in mode of living, has recently appeared in our midst or become accentuated'.

Though concluding that 'the dominant factor in deciding health legislation has often a political, rather than a scientific basis', he