Abstract

The need for a modern textbook of medical entomology has been evident for many years. This recent contribution has deviated somewhat from classical treatments of the subject in an effort to produce a useful contemporary text. The author's stated objective was to provide a thorough exposition of the extrinsic ecology of arthropod and arthropod-borne vertebrate pathogens. In this he has not succeeded entirely.

The book is divided into fourteen chapters including an introductory chapter, four on the classification, morphology, biology and ecology of arthropods, a chapter covering the direct effects of arthropods on man, seven chapters on agents of disease carried by arthropods and finally a chapter on abatement and suppression. While the organization is satisfactory, the treatment frequently is not. Thus, the chapter discussing abatement and suppression, while ostensibly providing strategic concepts of arthropod control and of the control of arthropod-borne disease, is actually so inadequately covered that the student would have little concept of how control, much less than eradication, can be achieved.