J. Anat. (1997) 191, pp. 477–478 Printed in the United Kingdom 477

Book Reviews

Dictionary of Scientific Units, 6th edn. By H. G.

J and D. B. MN. (Pp. ix­255;

£19.99 paperback; ISBN 0 412 46720 8.) London:

Chapman & Hall. 1992.

Anatomists, and other readers of the Journal of Anatomy,need to be familiar with terminology and units in branchesof science other than their own. This useful book, by twophysicists, is now in its 6th edition. There is a helpfulintroduction on the principles of systems of units. The maintext provides a descriptive alphabetical list of more than 900current, outdated, and recent but unadopted units ofmeasurement both scientific and general, with an emphasison physics and engineering. The historical background,such as on the development of the metre, is well researchedand very interesting. Examples of the breadth of mis-cellaneous and borderline scientific coverage are musicalscales, pencil hardness, the Fog index (readability), papersizes (A4 etc., but not paper weight : g m−#), and a Happinessindex (clinical psychology). I looked in vain for the RobinHood index (social economics), which is a measure of thespread of incomes between rich and poor. The tables at theend include physical constants and detailed conversionfactors. There is an extensive list of mainly historicalreferences, organised by the alphabetically arranged chap-ters.

An important derived SI unit that has been omitted is thekatal (enzyme activity : conversion of one mole per second).I believe that the capitalised Calorie (Cal), as acceptablenomenclature for the kilocalorie, or Medical}large calorie(nutrition), should be included, though kilojoules arepreferred. The use of normal solution, instead of molarsolution, is not recommended: there has been a clinicalfatality by confusion with ‘normal ’ (e.g. isotonic) saline.The unit pH represents the hydrogen ion activity, notconcentration.

I recommend interested readers also to Dresner (1971)though it does not include archaic units nor the latest SIunits, and to Baron (1994).

. .

B DN (ed.) (1994) Units, Symbols, and Abbreviations. A Guide

for Medical and Scientific Editors and Authors, 5th edn. London:

Royal Society of Medicine Press.

D S (1971) Units of Measurement: An Encyclopaedic

Dictionary. Aylesbury: Harvey Miller and Medcalf.

Regional Anatomy Colouring Book. By I. L, F.

K and J. S. (Pp. 200; 194

line illustrations; £10 paperback; ISBN 0 443

05727 3.) Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

1997.

I think everyone would agree that anatomy is a very visualsubject. The great teachers of anatomy have, to a greatextent, been noted for their brilliant blackboard drawings.Gray’s Anatomy became an instant success not so much onaccount of Henry Gray’s nicely written text, but because ofthe superb drawings by Dr H. G. Carter, some of which arestill used in the current edition.

The ideal anatomy student would be one who can sketchhis or her dissections, has no problem in reproducing cleardiagrams and has no difficulties in appreciating the 3-dimensional aspects of the body’s structure. For those whoare less fortunate, the study of clearly drawn diagrams hasmuch to recommended it. However, when revising thesubject, there is the disadvantage that the illustrations intextbooks are nearly always heavily labelled. To thestudent’s aid comes this interesting concept produced by anartist and 2 anatomists from the University of Edinburgh.This is a series of clearly drawn figures which systematicallycover the whole of the body (apart from the central nervoussystem) and which have lead lines but which are nototherwise labelled. The student with the aid of otherlearning media in the dissecting room and in the anatomylaboratory is then encouraged to colour in the structuresand to identify the labelled features ; of course, there isnothing to stop the keen student from filling in details ofunlabelled parts. With the current emphasis on self-learninganything that encourages this is to be commended. Theauthors are to be congratulated on a useful experiment.They will no doubt be able to give us a follow up of itssuccess. How about a prospective randomised study?

Atlas of the Human Brain. By J K. M, J

A and G P. (Pp. viii­328;

fully illustrated; $135 hardback, $89.95 paper-

back; ISBN 0 12 465360 hardback, 0 12 465361 8

paperback.) San Diego: Academic Press. 1997.

This is yet another atlas of the human brain. There isprobably not much more that can be done in terms of half-tone photographs of stereotactically derived sections to-gether with line drawings of them indicating salient features,such as the coronal myeloarchitectonic sections presentedhere. However, this atlas tries to correlate these withdifferent aspects of human brain morphology and toTalairach coordinates.

The first problem I had was finding my way around. AsI did not understand what each section was trying to do byworking through the main body of the book, I decided toread the Preface. Part 1 is supposed to be a ‘Topographicand Topometric Atlas ’, but I could not find Part 1 in theContents of in the book! It turned out to be labelled ‘3 ’ inthe text. Equally ‘Part 2’ is ‘4 ’. So I started again.

Section 3 does indeed deal with ‘serial macroscopicsections of MRI-scanned human heads’. It begins with 3plates of tiny images, not very useful even for orientation,then goes on to a mixture of MRI views, line diagrams andphotographs that I found very difficult to correlate and evenunderstand. I gather than MRI was performed on a numberof cadaver heads, and on a younger living volunteer. Thereare coronal sections mentioned with ‘®20° angulation’.Much, if not all, of the contents of each plate in this sectionis known, but the chance to be able to correlate theinformation from different sources is, to me, lost because ofthe complexity of the layout.

From page 58 onwards there are drawings of sections ofthe head, many dealing with head and neck anatomy ratherthan that of the brain. These drawings look rather familiar.Overall, I found that there was nothing especially new

478 Book Reviews

revealed, and the confusing presentation prevented myexploring the wealth of detail contained in the plates to itsfull. The images are of varying size, and are sometimes toosmall and complex to be easily followed.

There is a certain amount of text also, much of it in arather turgid style that does not make for easy reading. AsI have said, the Preface confused me. The Introductionstarts with a paragraph on cerebral localisation, but it is sosuperficial as to be almost meaningless. Figure 1, whichillustrates it, consists of minute panels that say essentiallynothing. What the rationale behind the curious drawing byHenschen is, I cannot say. Also, throughout the text thereare ‘alternative ’ words in parentheses that suggest to methat perhaps in translating from German alternative wordshad been added to the draft (in brackets) and that many ofthese survived to the printed version. There is then a lengthydiscussion of technical factors, including interindividualdifference. Such points are important, but laboured far toomuch here, and, again, illustrated by postage-stamp figures.A few references are given, but it is odd to find Brodmannomitted at the end of a section on cerebral localisation.

Later, there is yet another section on ‘Materials and

Methods’. Again, the detail is excruciating, and largelyunnecessary. It is also rather poorly selected. Why print apicture of a Vogt giant microtome? A good example of‘postage-stamp’ illustration and technical overkill can beappreciated on pages 10–12.

After the myeloarchitectonic coronal sections, there are anumber of tables of morphometric data from work over theyears, which are of some use to illustrate variability, butfuller details have already been widely published. After thatthere are various diagrams of ‘subcortical brain structures ’(pp. 273–4) that are unlabelled and, to me, rather mys-terious. Again, the significance of the ‘ template diagrams’with ‘suppressed’ details is not immediately apparent.

My overall conclusion about this book is that a braveattempt has been made to correlate data on the human brainfrom various sources, including living MRI, MRI ofcadavers, whole brain sections, and surface reconstructions.This is a laudable project, but the present book only servesto further confuse the issue for me due to its lack ofreadability, the less than adequate illustrations, and itsconfusing layout.

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