Infrared Absorption Spectra of Steroids (an Atlas)

comments (p. 82), "Apr's de publications initiales optimistes, ont succede des rapports negatifs." In the introduction, it becomes clear that French laboratory methods are much like ours. The Lee-White method and the Quick test are standard procedures. On the other hand, the Continental workers seem to place more emphasis than we do on the in vitro heparin tolerance. Later portions of the book refer to interesting and ingenious applications of the heparin tolerance test, as used by Soulier and Le Bolloc'h. Page 65 discusses the paradoxical hemorrhages encountered during dicumarol therapy and emphasizes what Dr. Le Bolloc'h mentioned when she visited Yale-that their heparin tolerance test is believed to be a safer guide to dicumarol therapy than is the Quick test. The first main part of the book is devoted to therapeutic agents. Soulier has reservations concerning the effectiveness of adrenochrome as a hemostatic drug. For the counteraction of heparin, he prefers protamine sulfate to toluidine blue. Both drugs can cause undesirable reactions, which Soulier discusses. For local hemostasis, he prefers gelatin foam to oxidized cellulose. For hemophilia he prefers dry plasma, which is prepared from fresh blood at the Centre Nationale de Transfusion. The patient can keep this material at home, or take it with him on a trip. This advance in medical management illustrates one of the many advantages of centralized blood banking. Soulier does not consider fraction I to represent a real advance over dry plasma in the treatment of hemophilia. For acute fibrinogenopenia he recommends fresh whole blood in quantities as high as two or three liters; but as appears later in the book (p. 151), this is not always successful. The second part of the book describes the diagnosis and treatment of the hemorrhagic syndromes. The chapters on hemophilia, the hypoprothrombinemias, and the thrombopenic purpuras are especially detailed and explicit. It is of interest that Soulier's experience with about eight hundred cases of hemorrhagic disorder includes 29 cases of Willebrand's thrombopathy (normal platelet count and clot retraction, with prolonged bleeding time), but not a single case of Glanzmann's thrombasthenia (isolated defect in clot retraction). Several specialists collaborated in the third part of the book( which deals with hemorrhages according to site: urinary tract, genital tract (one chapter on gynecological hemorrhages, two on obstetrical hemorrhages), nervous system, eye, ear, nose and throat, mouth, respiratory tract, digestive tract, and skin (dermatologic purpuras).