Many years ago, when I was much younger, there was a song to the effect that love was better the second time around. A somewhat perverse idea, but if perhaps not altogether true for love, could it be true for something as unromantic as a medical textbook? What brought these somewhat idiosyncratic thoughts to mind was receiving for review the second edition of Anesthesia and Co-Existing Disease, edited by Stoelting, Dierdorf, and McCammon. The original edition was published in 1983 and was well received at that time. What has the new edition to offer the second time around?
First, a new editor has been added, and the multiauthored text of the original edition has been replaced by an edition that is, as the preface states, "the product of the Editors." Be that as it may, the new format is virtually identical with that of the multiauthored first edition. Second, the