sciousness of the influence of health factors in pregnancy, the medicalisation ofchildbirth, the rise of feminist sociology, and the voices of an articulate mass ofpregnant and parturating women, have made it a noisy arean. Obstetricians and gynaecologists are divided between defending their hospital citadels and yielding to the siren voices outside; patients want both the security of good medical care and the comforts of home; militant midwives and health visitors strive to preserve and expand

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... their hard-won roles. Caught between all these pressures, the GPs, in this brief paper, fight their corner. They want obstetric training to move from its hospital base out into the community, emphasising the relative "normality" of most pregnancies; closer collaboration with midwives and greater attention to the quality of care. They are quiet over pay (one possible reason why GP-midwife units are declining), and differences within their own ranks. Do they really speak with one voice? BERNARD INEICHEN Lecturer in Public Health, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Charing Cmss and Westminster Medical School. BOOK REVIEWS Epidemiological studies: a practical guide. By Alan J Silman. (Pp 175; £14.95 pbk; £40.00 hbk). Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-43979-5 (pbk), 0-521-43371-1 (hbk). This introductory text was written originally for trainee public health physicians as a guide to the undertaking of simple epidemiological (largely field) studies. It is admirable for this purpose and has strong sections on study design, questionnaire design, and development, data analysis and interpretation, ethical issues, and project costings. There are many worked examples and the section on the validity of information and the reproducibility of measurements are particularly useful to anyone setting up a survey. This text therefore will be useful to a wide range of individuals including hospital specialists and general practitioners. The book more than adequately fulfils its title and contains a wealth of important practical hints on designing and running surveys. As a stand-alone text for epidemiology and public health, however, there are some gaps notably on the analysis of routine data, health services research, screening, and clinical trials. The book is presently unreferenced but this may be rectified in future editions.