B. Ya. Shimshelevich, V. N. Meshkov and T. P. Nikitin. Physiotherapy. For physicians and physical education specialists. Edited by B. Ya. Shimshelevich with a foreword by N. A. Semashko. State Medical Publishing House. Moscow, 1929, 270 pages, c. 2 p. 90 r.

The foundations of physical culture have been firmly laid by Soviet health care: its development is successful and rapid. Quite recently, some 6-7 years ago, it had to pave the way with incredible efforts to convince and organize the broad working masses for the preventive use of natural factors. The ice of social inertia has broken, and the physical culture movement, as the fundamental principle of the prevention of public health, is spreading in a wide wave throughout the Union. At the same time, new prospects are already being identified. Physical education has outgrown its original objectives. The great scientific work done, carefully staged laboratory studies, systematically conducted clinical observations, plus the enviable activity of the leaders of the physical culture movement, open the arrow for its parallel progress along the second path, along the path of using physical education as a serious therapeutic factor. Let there even be some shifts in the borderline areas of physiology and orthopedics. Physical education, extending its sphere of influence to the zones of mechano-aero-heliotherapy, at the same time contributes to their methodological and technical improvement on the basis of the previously accumulated clinical experience in these areas. It will be very good if athletes become competent orthopedists and physiatrists, and orthopedists and physiatrists improve their physical education qualifications. This will bring about a practically valuable synthesis of prevention and therapy at one of the most advanced vanguards of Soviet medicine. Numerous signs are the guarantee of this. One of them is the peer-reviewed book.