Heinemann Medical Dictionary

The compilers of this dictionary set out with the novel and laudable aim of listing only terms that have appeared in textbooks and journals published since 1980 and of excluding those that are already known to the majority of physicians. They have achieved an exemplary conciseness in their definitions, partly by omitting superfluous words and partly by a lavish use of abbreviations. Some entries, however, are not especially enlightening ("cholesterol the original steroid"), some are bewilderingly bald ("miryachit Russian form of compulsive mimicry"), and some are not definitions at all ("papillopathy usu. refers to optic disc").

Numerous Greek and Latin stems and affixes are also defined or explained. (One wonders what is the use of an entry such as "glomerulo- of renal glomerulus" when glomerulus itself is not defined.) Brief notes in square brackets at the end of many entries trace etymologies, identify eponyms, and give dates of the first