Book excerpt: An Introduction to Cardiovascular Physiology is designed primarily for students of medicine and physiology. This introductory text is mostly didactic in teaching style and it attempts to show that knowledge of the circulatory system is derived from experimental observations. This book is organized into 15 chapters. The chapters provide a fuller account of microvascular physiology to reflect the explosion of microvascular research and include a discussion of the fundamental function of the cardiovascular system involving the transfer of nutrients from plasma to the tissue. They also cover major advances in cardiovascular physiology including biochemical events underlying Starling's law of the heart, nonadrenergic, non-cholinergic neurotransmission, the discovery of new vasoactive substances produced by endothelium and the novel concepts on the organization of the central nervous control of the circulation. This book is intended to medicine and physiology students.