The following review article was sent from the depths of warring China in November, I939. I have undertaken the friendly office of preparing it for publication, but without making any essential alterations or additions. That the literature references, especially those of recent years, are incompletely reviewed, is understandable-our Chinese friends have repeatedly asked for help in the form of scientific journals. Some idea of the conditions of existence under which this review, and several experimental papers, came into being are indicated in the following quotation from a letter received from Dr. Tang at about that time. The flame of scientific adventure is not easily extinguished. "There was established in the interior of China, Kweiyang, a medical school for the training of physicians who are to be sent to the front. I was offered to be on the scientific staff, and be responsible for the preclinical courses, and to establish labs. This I took up, and went through all kinds of hardships to get there.... Six months in Kweiyang to start a medical school from nothing-absolutely nothing, except a 'hospital' of four beds, and a group of determined men. But those six months were the happiest of my life.... The medical school has been in full swing for over a year, with four terms a year with a good staff, and now a hospital of over ioo beds, and laboratories which may well compare with any school in China in equipment. And if there is anything more satisfactory to a pioneer, the furniture, and the laboratory benches of that school are a source of joy to me, even when I am away from them. I designed everything from a three-legged stool (after the principle of the tripod, for the floors are uneven) to the actually hand-made pneumothorax machine which was rigged up from parts gotten from junkshops all by myself, in order that a very serious case of tuberculosis may be treated. And since then, that machine, crude as it may be, has served over 2.oo patients. I went to Hongkong for two months to buy equipment for the college, and in doing so, I travelled all over the southwest of China on bus, pushing the bus most of the time, and sometimes in the dark, when no lights were available, I had two handtorches in my hands, and ran before the bus so that we could reach the city for the night." R. W. GBRARD Department of Physiology University of Chicago