The Practice of Medicine

The editor of this volume is a distinguished clinician and teacher. The task confronting him has grown enormously in the 20 years since he published his first edition of this work. The gains constantly being made in the basic medical sciences as well as in clinical medicine must represent a psychological barrier of no mean magnitude to an editor. The result is the fruition of monumental labor and of a love for the subject. This heavy book has many of the virtues and faults inherent in any compendium attempting to encompass the whole field of medicine, including neurology. The quality of clinical judgment, quantity of factual material, and the elegance of presentation vary from section to section. In some of the most rapidly expanding medical fields, the book is already partially outmoded. For instance, the excellent section on the chemotherapy of infection contains no bibliographical reference after 1953, except for