The rise and fall of compartmental analysis

The concept of compartment evolved in the contexts of radioactivity, physio logy, pharmacology and tracer kinetics. Recently compartmental models have been compared with 'physiological models', C even though in most cases the same, or stricter hypotheses, are necessary for the validity of these latte r models. This paper shows that the methods of compartmental analysis are v alid only if some specific hypotheses are valid. (C) 2001 Academic Press.