Brain, Nerves, Muscles, and Electricity: My Life in Science

The book is very comprehensive, covering virtually every aspect of neurosurgery in thirty-two chapters. The first two chapters are on general care and neurology, respectively. I found this to be quite a good set up for the rest of the book, and also serves to make the book a more complete handbook for the neurosurgical resident who will also be managing patients on the floor. The remainder of the book focuses on the various neurosurgical diseases. There are several aspects to the organization of the book that I found very useful. For one, most topics include discussions on the clinical presentation and findings of a disease, its etiology and epidemiology, and the treatments and prognoses. This really helps to put each topic into perspective with respect to where it falls in the spectrum of neuro-related disease. Moreover, there is a consistent emphasis on the findings in the literature, which emphasizes not only the empirical and academic nature of neurosurgery, but also serves to remind the clinician that the decisions made are often not based on hard and fast rules, but rather, are a culmination of the available data. For example, in a discussion of acute transverse myelitis, we learn that from a study where sixty-two people were analyzed, ninety-seven percent of the patients presented with some form of muscular weakness, while thirteen percent of the patients presented with nuchal rigidity. We are left to decide for ourselves the validity and weight we choose to put on these findings, and this emphasizes the relatively unknown nature of many of these conditions where we only have a relatively small number of patients who have ever been studied. Another great feature of the handbook is the inclusion of drug information at the end of the relevant topic. Some handbooks I have seen choose to add a pharmacopeia at the very end of the book, which leaves you toggling back and forth through the text. Greenberg places the drug information, often including mechanism of action and side effects, right where one would want to see it during the therepeutic discussions. In addition, the book is rife with excellent references which in and of themselves would make for a decent reading list for a neurosurgical resident. To sum up, this is a book which is definitely near and dear to the hearts of many a neurosurgical resident, and it continues to improve upon itself with each new edition.