The ABC of Acid-Base Chemistry provides physiologists, medical students, and physicians with an intelligible outline of the elements of physiological acid-base chemistry.

This new edition of Horace W. Davenport's standard text takes into account different ways of looking at the problems of acid-base derived from new instrumentation. The exposition has been modified to allow the student to apply his understanding to other systems of description of the acid-base status. Although the pH system has been retained, there is increasing emphasis on the use of hydrogen ion concentration.

Topics discussed include: partial pressure of gases, composition of alveolar gas, transport of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, buffer action of hemoglobin and seperated plasma, oxygenated whole blood and reduced blood, concepts of base excess and base deficit, and chemical regulation of respiration.

"Any reader who clearly understands the subject matter of this book will have a firm grounding in the principles of the subject; I find it the clearest text of this type that I have read."—British Journal of Hospital Medicine

"This little book is of great value to chemically trained physicians and medical students who want to get a clearer idea of the physiology of acid base chemistry in the blood."—The Journal of Gastroenterology

How does one write an experimental ABC, an impossible theory that would deal with a series of phenomena, concepts, places, sensations, persons, and moods? A para-philosophy? Returning to a once-abandoned project of fragmented thoughts where the author’s voice moves from the serious to the pathetic, to the absurd, to the cynical, Simon Critchley’s ABC of Impossibility finds new life in the form of this small encyclopedic and aphoristic text where the reader bears witness to the slow emergence of an attempt at a poetic ontology. ABC of Impossibility is a unique undertaking that reexamines the poetic site of the fragment as thought. Following a heritage of fragmented, aphoristic thinkers including Pascal, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Pessoa, Critchley revitalizes a para-philosophical thinking that can only be uttered by way of another. As he declares in the opening pages, “In writing this, I promise to tell the truth, but not to be myself.”