One of the most fascinating tools at the disposal of the molecular biologist is the medical clinic. The responsibilities of those who provide health care do not stop when they give optimal care to the individual patient and train their successors adequately. They also are under the obligation to obtain maximal information from every case they treat in order to reach a better understanding of the underlying illness in order to improve therapeutic results in the next patient. Fundamental research in pathological material is therefore a medical must as well as an opportunity for scientific work....

This book comprises the essential records from a Boerhaave course given in June 1971 for specialists in cardiology and other fields of internal medicine interested in the subject of quantitation in cardiology. It is evident that in the wide field of medicine, and particularly in cardiology, there is a growing need for exact and detailed information in conjunction with existing diag nostic methods. This is apparent in the greater precision in anatomical and haemodynamic details required by the thoracic surgeon as the number of available heart operations gradually increases. In retrospect it is...

The Boerhaave Courses in Cardiology have been held once or twice a year since 1955. For the greater part they were meant for specialists in Cardiology, Pediatrics, and Internal Medicine, who wished to hear about recent advances in Cardiology and in its anatomical and physical basis. For some time the courses reflected mostly the work in Leiden, especially on congenital heart disease, but soon the highly valuable cooperation of other centres was obtained on subjects in which they had more experience. In later years speakers from abroad were also invited and they con- tributed greatly to the...

Since 1952, postgraduate courses for practising physicians and speci- alists have been given by the Medical Faculty of the University of Leiden in the Boerhaave Quarter, in which most of its clinics and laboratories are located. During these years, recent advances in a wide variety of m~dical fields and subjects have been discussed by distin- guished speakers from many countries. The steadily increasing atten- dance has shown that, as could be expected from the rapid progress of modern medicine, there is a widely felt need for this form of postgra- duate study. In 1957, therefore, the Leiden...