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NOT very rapid progress has been made in recent years in our knowledge of the more intimate biological qualities of human tumors. The studies of MacCarty, Broders, Martzloff, Greenough, and others, especially of the French school, have shown, however, that a beginning has been made toward an understanding of the biology of human tumors, based upon an analysis of their histology, but the facts are few as yet. Some knowledge also has come from careful clinical study. The greater control over the conditions of investigating animal tumors possessed by the experimentalist has led to much more accurate knowledge than is possible in clinical study. Foremost, perhaps, in general interest are the recent discoveries of Warburg on the conditions of the breaking down of glucose in the body cells. As you know, he found that normal tissues used glucose by oxidizing it in the presence of oxygen into carbon dioxide and water, while tumor cells are capable of splitting large quantities of glucose in another direction, tha...

From an extensive clinical experience, Dr. John Conley has written a book that is useful and unique. In a highly readable style, he has presented the essentials about specific tumors of the head and neck along with a rationale and recommendations for surgical treatment. It is a welcome change to have this type of overview in a field where isolated facts and operative techniques have often obscured the more important considerations of cancer biology and therapeutic objectives. The reader is never blinded by chaff. A further advantage is the emphasis on prompt and well-planned reconstruction following ablation. A patient wants not only to be cured but to resume his place within society. The surgeon's responsibility, as Dr. Conley correctly stresses, is to achieve both these goals. Although surgical management is its principal theme, this volume also contains information about irradiation as an alternative and adjunct. Surgeons who deal with head

No human malady today is of greater interest to the biologist or of more concern to the public than is cancer. The appeal to lay and professional minds alike is due not only to the manifold problems involved in the prevention. control and therapy of cancer but also to the much publicized behavior of cancer cells as a ruthless group of gangsters running amuck among the orderly functioning tissues of the human economy. In the light of our present knowledge of the cancer process, this analogy is useful and not altogether inaccurate since the human gangster and the cell gangster do have something in common. Both arise as a rule under unfavorable environments. Unquestionably, cancer has biologic attributes that set it apart from all other forms of maladjustment. It is my purpose first to set forth some of these attributes, which, I believe, give cancer research an advantageous position in