This volume records the proceedings at the Fifth School of Thoracic Medicine held at the Ettore Majorana School of International Scientific Culture in March 1981. Foregathered there were a heterogeneous group comprising clinicians, pathologists, ultra-microscopists, biochemists, immunologists, cellular biologists and physiologists and they presented the twenty seven 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...