Cecil Essentials of Medicine

Most modern textbooks of medicine have several onerous attributes: they are heavy and expensive, they overwhelm the reader with information, and their contents are often ephemeral. Their ephemeral nature, stemming from rapid changes in medical knowledge, is beyond an author's control. The other three burdensome attributes are rendered tolerable by Andreoli and his associates inCecil Essentials of Medicine. Other authors have written synopses of medicine in attempts to surmount the burden of the usual textbook, but synopses are inadequate. A synopsis tells us what the subject is about and marshals the facts, but, unlikeEssentials, it does not facilitate understanding. Complete understanding is an individual accomplishment that can be enhanced, but not replaced, by a textbook. Nevertheless, the student needs a guide to provide facts and, more importantly, fundamental ideas that lead to understanding. The authors ofEssentialshave done this in about half the space of most standard