A simple dot enzyme immunoassay (Dot-EIA) was carried out to detect antibody to Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigen 5 in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) specimens from 40 patients with a clinical diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis (TBM). The assay gave a positive reaction in all ten patients with culture proven TBM. In 30 culture negative patients with TBM, the assay was positive at a titre of 1:16 in 18 patients. In 40 patients with non-tuberculous neurological diseases (control group) the assay was negative at a titre of 1:16. The Dot-EIA had an overall sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 100% in the diagnosis of TBM. This assay could be used as a rapid screening test to establish the diagnosis of TBM, particularly in patients in whom bacteriological investigations for Mycobacterium tuberculosis in CSF specimens are negative.

1170 whose lengths vary with the amount of information available under each chapter heading and in this respect the book is well proportioned. One page on the radiology of the condition is entirely suffiicent, as are two pages on its psychology. By contrast, some 46 pages are devoted to a detailed morphological study of the muscle and peripheral nerve. They cover the history, clinical features, a tentative classification based on the author's experience, morphology, electrophysiology, radiology, psychology, biochemistry, immunology, and so forth.This book summarises very adequately and comprehensively the profusion of recent reports on the spinal muscular atrophies, and it has not suffered in translation. I This book, I am sure, will have a wide interdisciplinary appeal in the neurosciences and can be unreservedly recommended.