Oxford Textbook of Medicine

I scarcely know how to begin this review. The Oxford Textbook of Medicine is no ordinary book. For a start it weighs about one and a quarter stone, and as I know to my cost it is not easy to carry home on foot. An African-style head cushion might help you here. Secondly, as a well meaning colleague said unexpectedly tartly well you've got a lot of reading to do before filing your review. True, but I've enjoyed the job. How the 17th century editors of King James' English Authorised and Bishop Morgan's Welsh versions of the Bible coped without wordprocessors I'll never know. We all qualify, get embroiled in our own particular lines and can easily lose touch with other fields. This massive book offerS considerable help in medicine, by which I do not mean only the American sort of 'internal medicine'. This is Medicine. Amazing' ly, despite the roll call of over 350 individual authors the genera' style is pleasing and comparatively uniform. Where called for' there are many clear and useful illustrations. The Oxford Textbook of Medicine is undoubtedly the bible o' modern medicine. No, not just the high-tech type. Both the mundane and the abstruse topics are considered. There 's everything for undergraduates, membership candidates, practi' tioners in third-world conditions, researchers and even mere pathologists. As the computer magazines say about lesser offer' ings, it is all wrapped up in an exceptionally attractive bundle part from the general small revisions, with new and extensi^e y rewritten chapters, this second edition is also considerate improved by now having a full index at the end of both volume^ I personally am lost in admiration of this production. Expen sive it may seem to be at first sight. Would that the two mair] Defence Unions were to give such value for money! However can t think of any better way to reduce medical litigation, or ^ give an enjoyable and informative medical read than the secon edition of this exceptional book. *~C