The Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine edited by Stephen Lock, John
Last and George Dunea, Oxford University Press, 拢39.50, ISBN
0192629506
A DOCTOR makes a mistake and a patient dies. As a result, a census of
practising doctors is carried out. They are all re-certified and
re-licensed鈥攖hat mistake won鈥檛 kill another patient.
In the light of recent medical malpractice scandals in Britain, this action
seems admirably thorough. But the place was Baghdad, the time AD 949.
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Medicine flowered in the Arab civilisation that once stretched from the
Ganges to southern Spain. The medical knowledge of the Greeks was preserved and
greatly extended even as it faded from sight in most of Europe. Surgery, for
example, remained in the hands of barbers for many centuries in Europe, while
Arab doctors recognised it as part of medicine. Their textbooks described
procedures such as the removal of breast tumours. 鈥淚f anatomical knowledge is
ignored, mistakes will be made and the patient killed,鈥� wrote the surgeon-doctor
Abulcassis.
This is the kind of titbit you can find in the latest edition of The Oxford
Illustrated Companion to Medicine. It鈥檚 a bold attempt to take in the vast reach
of medicine, with articles from abortion to zoonoses, spiced up by the
occasional grainy old black-and-white photo of some hideous deformity.
But the inclusion of longer entries in this latest edition makes it harder to
find what you鈥檙e looking for. And I was staggered to discover that there are no
fewer than four separate indexes instead of a single comprehensive one. So I鈥檓
not sure who would find this book useful. The entries on specific conditions
aren鈥檛 detailed enough for professionals, nor are they intended to be a
practical guide for lay people. Yet the dry textbook style and encyclopedic
format means it鈥檚 not the kind of book you can read for pleasure.