This enlarged edition of Man Adapting includes a new chapter expanding Dr. Dubos's discussion of the role of medicine in man's adaptive processes. In 1965 he wrote at length of the biological and social problems of human adaptation, while treating the medical aspects of this problem only in passing. He believed that the goal of medicine was to help man function successfully with the particular circumstances of his environment and heredity. But despite advancements in the prevention and treatment of disease, skepticism has developed during the last two decades concerning the usefulness...

In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1960, Richard Goldschmidt wrote: "I am confident that in twenty years my work], which is now ignored, will be given an honorable place in the history of evolutionary thought." The publication of this edition, now reissued with a new introduction by Stephen Jay Gould, proves Goldschmidt's prediction to be correct.
Goldschmidt, one of the world's great geneticists, delivered the prestigious Silliman lectures at Yale University in 1939 and published his remarks in 1940 as The Material Basis of Evolution. His intent was to inquire into...