Circulation

THIS is the first of three volumes on the circulation which will make up the second section of the Handbook of Physiology. It follows the first section of three volumes on neurophysiology and will be followed by further sections covering respiration, renal physiology, endocrine physiology, etc. The concept of the Handbook is a very important landmark in the development of physiological literature and other disciplines may well copy it. By the time the last volumes are printed, if not before, the earlier volumes will need rewriting. This is where the Handbook is in a stronger position than its spiritual ancestors, the great German Handbucher. Because of its sponsorship by the American Physiological Society, the Handbook can reasonably be expected to outlive the relatively short time span of competence of a single editor. The object of the Handbook is to have the main aspects of physiology covered in chapters by distinguished authors who have international stature in their fields. Authorship is not therefore restricted to those working in North America; the present volume includes chapter covers a limited field in considerably greater depth than a textbook, but the chapters are not merely review articles on current work. Old ideas which help in the understanding of a subject are given greater emphasis than current controversies which seem likely to be of ephemeral interest. It is hoped that the material will meet the needs of three groups of readers, the graduate student who wishes to pursue a subject further than is possible using standard textbooks, the teacher who wishes to increase his understanding of current concepts outside his own speciality and the research worker who requires references and current concepts in the field that he is beginning to explore. The present volume tries to cover the physiology of the heart and its controls in health and disease along with certain material about the volume of the blood and the biophysical background of the organs of the circulation. Though the material will mainly be of interest to physiologists and biophysicists, clinicians will have difficulty in finding more lucid and modern expression of the fundamentals of electrocardiography, phonocardiography and the physiological consequences of congenital heart disease and valvular insufficiency than is given in these chapters. With multiple authorship, it is difficult for any editor, however strong, to impose absolute uniformity on the different contributions. Perhaps it is not even desirable. Certainly some chapters are better …