This volume records the proceedings at the Sixth School of Thoracic Medicine held at the Ettore Majorana School of International Scientific Culture in June 1982. Foregathered there were a heterogeneous group comprising clinicians, pharmacologists, pathologists, ultra- microscopists, biochemists and immunologists and they presented the eighteen papers seen in the contents list. The discussion which followed each paper was faithfully recorded (and where necessary translated) and may be found after each author's presentation. This free discussion is perhaps the most valuable part of the School...