Woods Injurious to Human Health. A Manual

The authors begin by reviewing in vitro studies of lymphocyte movement. They report the dramatic effects of changing culture conditions upon locomotion. Under favorable conditions, lymphocytes approach the top speeds of neutrophils and monocytes. The authors also review the available evidence of lymphocyte chemokinesis and chemotaxis. Then they turn their attention to the relevance of these in vitro observations to lymphocyte migration in vivo. Using studies of transit times for labeled sub-populations of lymphocytes from the blood through lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues, they attempt to explain the non-random distribution of lymphocytes in the body. Those with a casual interest in immunology will miss little by passing up this book. These reviews were not written to be introductions to the uninitiated. However , the researcher in immunology will find this volume very valuable. The reviews do more than survey accumulated data; they put those data into perspective, as well. They paint a complex picture of the immune system which is simply beautiful. Place yourself behind the desk of a small-town family practitioner. Your patient is a multitalented musician in the high school orchestra, playing both violin and recorder. She presents with an eczematous rash under her chin and perioral der-matitis. Now put yourself in the shoes of an emergency room doctor in a Florida hospital. A critically ill young man is rushed to your service with arrhythmias. His hitchhiking buddy reports that he was perfectly healthy until he ate his hotdog, which he skewered on the branch of a flowering shrub and cooked over an open fire. Wood is ubiquitous in our lives. From the split log fed into the wood stove to household furniture to the pencil, matchstick, or toothpick, wood contacts our skin or mucosal surfaces every day. Anyone who works with wood also subjects his respiratory tract to irritation by wood dusts. Dr. Bjorn Hausen's Woods Injurious to Human Health reviews sources, uses, and chemistry of woods from 288 species of trees from around the world and discusses diseases associated with wood contact ranging in seriousness from simple skin rash to Hodgkin's disease and adenocar-cinoma of the pharynx. Dr. Hausen's manual would inform you that violin chinrests made of boxwood or East Indian rosewood and recorders made of cocobolo or Mozambique ebony have been associated with dermatological pathology and that cardiac glycosides found in the flowering shrub Oleander are fatally toxic even if only one leaf is ingested. …