Walter B. Cannon:The Life and Times of a Young Scientist. Saul Benison, A. Clifford Barger and Elin L. Wolfe. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987. 506 pp. $30.00.


This biographical history is as interesting to read as a suspense novel, containing elements of personal and institutional conflict and intrigue, local and national politics, international conflict and cooperation, and scientific, educational and administrative creativity. A foreword by Howard E. Morgan, former president of the American Physiological Society, puts the drama in its proper setting of a seminal period in the development of modern, scientifically based medicine.

The book's historical scholar ship, scientific insight and perspective, and archival completeness and ingenuity are due to the superb qualifications of the authors—Saul Benison, professor of history at the University of Cincinatti; A. Clifford Barger, professor of physiology and one of Cannon's successors as chairman of the department of physiology at Harvard Medical School; and...

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