Kurds and his possible employment of the OP agents during his war with Iran, and the Sarin attack in the Tokyo underground by an extremist religious set magnetized the world with respect to the OP drugs. As these drugs exert their toxicity via their cholinergic action on the nervous, particularly central nervous, system, it is no wonder that the research in the cholinergic ? eld attracts, and merits, our intense attention. These considerations underlie the signi? cance of this book, as Alex Karczmar devotes an entire chapter of Exploring the Vertebrate Central Cholinergic Nervous System to anticholinest- ases (antiChEs), and as he is an acknowledged expert in the ? eld of cholinergic toxicity as well as a consultant to the Surgeon General of the U. S. Army.