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Health and fitness in the modern world
Book
reviews
DIACXOSIS AND MANAGEMENT OF PAIN. By Bernard E. Finneson, M.D., F.A.C.S., Neurosurgeon, The Episcopal Hospital, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1962, W. B. Saunders Company, 261 pages. Price $8.50. This
book on pain is a good and practical one. It is written from the point of view of the neurosurgeon. It includes many simple illustrations concerned with diagnosis, localization, areas of referral, and management. Pain is one of the most common and most annoying symptoms of disease in man. It concerns physicians in every held of medicine. Although this book is not specifically intended for cardiologists, it should interest them greatly, for it is they who are concerned at all times with pain in diagnosis and management. Chest pain has many sources of origin other than the heart and blood vessels. It is the extracardiac types of pain which offer so much difficulty, and which this book is about. Even though one may not agree entirely with all ideas presented, this is a useful, simple, and well-illustrated book.
HEALTH AND FITNESS IN THE MODERK WORLD. A Collection of Papers Presented at the Institute of Normal Human Anatomy, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome, Italy. Published by The Athletic Institute in cooperation with The American College of Sports Medicine, 392 pages. Price $4.50. During the Olympic Games in Rome, in 1960, experts in the field of sports medicine, physical education and fitness congregated to exchange their ideas and experiences on the status and concepts of “fitness” in their home countries. Thirty-eight participants from 16 Western and Eastern nations set the stage for scientific discussions by presenting formal papers. These papers were collected in this book as a documentation of world-wide research activities concerned with providing some of the needed facts for the understanding and knowledge of good health and general “physical fitness.” In the present days of awakening concern about man’s waning resistance to the strain and stress of daily life and to emergencies-as a consequence of all the technological progress making human life too comfortable-such understanding becomes essential for organizing adequate countermeasures against the process of decay. Thus, this book should be of special interest to general physicians and to specialists in several medical fields who are not only concerned with acutely effective therapeutic procedures but who are in terms of preventiv-e and re2l.50 thinking habilitative measures of health. The book does not impress as an entity. With the involvement of so many contributors-most of them discussing only small sections of their research interests-a well-rounded. informative
719
brochure was not to be expected. However, the material presented and discussed in Rome was so diversified that one area or the other should catch the potential reader’s interest, with favorable or antagonistic reactions. Psychological and educational aspects of physical activities and sports were as expertly covered as were neurophysiologic, cardiorespiratory, and metabolic aspects, in addition to problems of genetics, performance rhythms in sports, or overtraining. Even philosophic considerations of amateurism and sportsmanship in modern sports have come to word. There is a strongly growing trend in the United States to apply tests of functional and metabolic adaptive capacity-tests which have become well established for the assessment of “fitness” in the “normal”-on a variety of patients for a variety of reasons, e.g., for diagnostic purposes, for the evaluation of the effects of certain treatments, for establishing the failure or success of rehabilitation techniques, etc. Every.one who wishes to obtain basic information on “normal” responses to physical work and on the limitations which might separate the poor from the fair, or the excellent from the superior performer, should attempt to read carefully some contributions of authors from Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States-even if the reading might become severed by language barriers. Undoubtedly, this book has great assets in its favor: it stimulates the thinking about present-day health problems of the “healthy,” evokes here and there justifiable criticism and the urge to collect research facts for a scientific re-battle, and it opens up a few avenues for further research on interesting problems in human biology.
LA TRASPOSIZIONE DEI GROSSI VAX. STUDIO RADIOLOGICO (The Transposition of the Great Vessels). By F. Fossati, F. Barbaccia, and G. Pompili. Turin, 1961, Minerva Medica, 213 pages, 103 illustrations. Price: 6,500 lire ($11.). This
Italian monograph contains a complete review of the problem of transposition of the great vessels. Embryologic and anatomic studies, the clinical picture, and the electrocardiograms and phonocardiograms of the cases are discussed in detail and illustrated by excellent schemes and original graphs. Catheterization data are briefly reported. In the second half of the book, the data obtained in the roentgenologic study. of the clinical cases with and without contrast media are discussed in detail and illustrated by original documents of high quality. The data supplied by roentgenkymography, aortography, and coronary angiography are then presented. In addition, the differential diagnosis and the treatment of these cases are discussed in detail. Sixteen personal cases are described at the end of
reviews
DIACXOSIS AND MANAGEMENT OF PAIN. By Bernard E. Finneson, M.D., F.A.C.S., Neurosurgeon, The Episcopal Hospital, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1962, W. B. Saunders Company, 261 pages. Price $8.50. This
book on pain is a good and practical one. It is written from the point of view of the neurosurgeon. It includes many simple illustrations concerned with diagnosis, localization, areas of referral, and management. Pain is one of the most common and most annoying symptoms of disease in man. It concerns physicians in every held of medicine. Although this book is not specifically intended for cardiologists, it should interest them greatly, for it is they who are concerned at all times with pain in diagnosis and management. Chest pain has many sources of origin other than the heart and blood vessels. It is the extracardiac types of pain which offer so much difficulty, and which this book is about. Even though one may not agree entirely with all ideas presented, this is a useful, simple, and well-illustrated book.
HEALTH AND FITNESS IN THE MODERK WORLD. A Collection of Papers Presented at the Institute of Normal Human Anatomy, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome, Italy. Published by The Athletic Institute in cooperation with The American College of Sports Medicine, 392 pages. Price $4.50. During the Olympic Games in Rome, in 1960, experts in the field of sports medicine, physical education and fitness congregated to exchange their ideas and experiences on the status and concepts of “fitness” in their home countries. Thirty-eight participants from 16 Western and Eastern nations set the stage for scientific discussions by presenting formal papers. These papers were collected in this book as a documentation of world-wide research activities concerned with providing some of the needed facts for the understanding and knowledge of good health and general “physical fitness.” In the present days of awakening concern about man’s waning resistance to the strain and stress of daily life and to emergencies-as a consequence of all the technological progress making human life too comfortable-such understanding becomes essential for organizing adequate countermeasures against the process of decay. Thus, this book should be of special interest to general physicians and to specialists in several medical fields who are not only concerned with acutely effective therapeutic procedures but who are in terms of preventiv-e and re2l.50 thinking habilitative measures of health. The book does not impress as an entity. With the involvement of so many contributors-most of them discussing only small sections of their research interests-a well-rounded. informative
719
brochure was not to be expected. However, the material presented and discussed in Rome was so diversified that one area or the other should catch the potential reader’s interest, with favorable or antagonistic reactions. Psychological and educational aspects of physical activities and sports were as expertly covered as were neurophysiologic, cardiorespiratory, and metabolic aspects, in addition to problems of genetics, performance rhythms in sports, or overtraining. Even philosophic considerations of amateurism and sportsmanship in modern sports have come to word. There is a strongly growing trend in the United States to apply tests of functional and metabolic adaptive capacity-tests which have become well established for the assessment of “fitness” in the “normal”-on a variety of patients for a variety of reasons, e.g., for diagnostic purposes, for the evaluation of the effects of certain treatments, for establishing the failure or success of rehabilitation techniques, etc. Every.one who wishes to obtain basic information on “normal” responses to physical work and on the limitations which might separate the poor from the fair, or the excellent from the superior performer, should attempt to read carefully some contributions of authors from Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States-even if the reading might become severed by language barriers. Undoubtedly, this book has great assets in its favor: it stimulates the thinking about present-day health problems of the “healthy,” evokes here and there justifiable criticism and the urge to collect research facts for a scientific re-battle, and it opens up a few avenues for further research on interesting problems in human biology.
LA TRASPOSIZIONE DEI GROSSI VAX. STUDIO RADIOLOGICO (The Transposition of the Great Vessels). By F. Fossati, F. Barbaccia, and G. Pompili. Turin, 1961, Minerva Medica, 213 pages, 103 illustrations. Price: 6,500 lire ($11.). This
Italian monograph contains a complete review of the problem of transposition of the great vessels. Embryologic and anatomic studies, the clinical picture, and the electrocardiograms and phonocardiograms of the cases are discussed in detail and illustrated by excellent schemes and original graphs. Catheterization data are briefly reported. In the second half of the book, the data obtained in the roentgenologic study. of the clinical cases with and without contrast media are discussed in detail and illustrated by original documents of high quality. The data supplied by roentgenkymography, aortography, and coronary angiography are then presented. In addition, the differential diagnosis and the treatment of these cases are discussed in detail. Sixteen personal cases are described at the end of