Catecholamines I-II. [antikvár]

PrefaceThe two new volumes Catecholamines are actually the third "state-of-the-art" report in the series of Heffter-Heubner's Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. The first (Adrenalin und adrenalinverwandte Substanzen by P. Trendelenburg, 1924) covered the subject in 163 pages. Catecholamines (edited by H. Blaschko and E. Muscholl, 1972) was published in one volume of slightly more than 1000 pages. The succesor, also called Catecholamines now appears in two volumes - and with a further increase in the total number of pages.It is up to future readers to decide whether present-day authors (able to rely on computers) are more verbose than the earlier ones or whether the undeniable explosion of knowledge accounts for the increase in size. The editors prefer the second of these hypotheses. They should like to draw the sceptical reader's attention to Fig. 1 of the preface of Iversen (1967) which illustrates the explosive increase in yearly publications (quoted by the author) between 1955 and 1965. If that figure suggested that the rate of relevant publications approached a maximum (or V^ax) at the end of this period, one may legitimately ask whether perhaps this Vax characterized certain memory stores rather than the rate of relevant publications. Can any individual store the information contained in 150 publications per year (or 0.41 per day!), expecially when it is highly likely that the publication explosion continued unabatedly throughout the 1970s and 1980s? This high rate of publication is one of the reasons why there is an urgent need for critical reviews that enable the nonexpert to enter a new field with a minimum waste of time or the expert to check quickly on progress in neighbouring fields.The present volumes are a successor to, but not a new edition of, Catecholamines of 1972. Blaschko (1972) had to acknowledge the sad fact that the editors failed to receive this or that promised chapter. The editors of the present volumes were by no means luckier. Irrespective of these missing chapters, it would have been quite impossible to aim at a presentation of all areas in which catecholamines are under active study. Hence, in spite of the increased size of Volume 90, Catecholamines (1988) resembles the volume of 1972 in presenting "selected topics". We hope to offer a variety of topics that pleases some and offends very few.As Szekeres (1980/81) edited the volumes Adrenergic Activators and Inhibitors (also in this series), the present editors felt entitled to concentrate on "basic mechanisms", with relatively little emphasis on "organ- or system-specific actions".