After 12 years, Paul Wood's classic, Diseases of the Heart and Circulation, has come out in a revised edition. This 12-year period has been one of tremendous development and growth in the field of cardiology and has required a new reference text. Paul Wood died (ironically, of heart disease) during the preparation of this revision. But about a dozen of his friends and colleagues, with his widow's consent, completed the work.
The result is an encyclopedic text of 1,000 pages which lacks some of the easy readability of the earlier editions. It gains in stature by its density of information. There are no wasted words. The overall impression is that each sentence is a declarative statement. In many instances some of these declarations, although acceptable to a cardiologist, could bear a word or two of explanation for the sake of making a point comprehensible to a general internist.
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