Leisure and Recreation

ALLERGY OF THE NOSE AND PARANASAL SINUSES. By French K. Hansel. The C. V. Mosby Company. St. Louis, 1936. Pp. 820. $10. John Bostock made the first contribution to the literature of allergy in 1819, and for many years thereafter little or nothing was added to our knowledge. The first American contribution was Morrill Wyman's book "Autumnal Catarrh" published in 1872, revised and enlarged in 1876. It was not until the first years of the present century that contributions to the literature became at all frequent. During the past ten or fifteen years a great bulk of observation has been published. Doctor Hansel quotes 2,464 references in his bibliography. Although the title of this book is Allergy of the Nose and Paranasal Sinuses, it treats the whole subject of allergy in the utmost detail, including food and gastro-intestinal allergy, urticaria, angioneurotic edema and eczema, asthma, allergic lesions of the ear and in ophthalmology. It is a complete and illuminating treatise on the whole fascinatng and baffling subject. Indeed, if one were to criticize, and actually there is no need for it, the criticism would be that so much material is quoted and the observations of so many have been included, that it might be a more workable volume if many of the trivial and perhaps unsubstantiated conjectures were omitted. Doctor Hansel's style is direct and concise even though it is of necessity made somewhat jerky by the interpolation of the hundreds of references which interfere with continuous reading, but make the volume invaluable.