The fingernails never received anything like the attention they should receive, either as useful residual tools for picking, clawing, and scratching or as ornaments. Their physiology has been left largely, but not completely, a blank. Only recently has their growth been studied. Although a number of treatises have been devoted to diseases of the nail, these have been notably, indeed notoriously, at the barest descriptive morphologic stage. They have not really attacked the clear and close relationship of nails to the skin and the hair and, in particular, have not related them to general disease. Samman has gone some distance on the way to repairing this deficit. He has treated the problem under the expected headings of anatomy and physiology, symptoms from nail disease, then infections, inflammations, disorders of unknown origin, such as psoriasis, circulatory diseases, and certain nail disorders associated with general medical conditions. The book is a useful