Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine 16th Edition

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Paperweight and Home Improvement Aid
Review: Despite the title of my review (for more on that, keep reading), and despite the fact that I'm an acupuncturist, I do love Western conventional medicine and this book.

Seriously, this is the 'gold standard' (not the 'golden standard' as another reviewer put it) of medical textbooks. It's insanely detailed and chances are that pretty much nobody knows or reads all of it. I look forward to reading it more after I finish more advanced chemistry and medical courses (going to become an MD too). Til then, it's partly Greek, partly English.

I once set out to read the whole book, one chapter per day, and I think I made it for two whole days. I actually haven't picked it up except to move, to unpack it, and put it on the book shelf UNTIL TODAY.

My desk from IKEA isn't too sturdy. The place you put the keyboard has a pad (...)of your palms (ergonomic, but not really), but that part is attached by hinges (because it's so important to hide the keyboard when you're not using it) and I put a lot of weight there, and today the second of its three hinges broke. It just hung there looking stupid. It seemed to be saying, "See, wasn't it worth it to spend three hours lost in IKEA wandering around looking for the checkout, grunting me into the car, putting me together, then dissembling me and moving me across town to your new house, and reassembling me?"

My wife and I determined that screwing door jam deadbolt lock hole covers across the space would be the ideal engineering solution. But to drill into it, I needed a solid surface beneath it. I placed atop my chair seat a hefty trinity of Harrison's, A Manual of Acupuncture, and A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine, plus the more slim Dao of Chinese Medicine to create a firm work table. With the help of those books and their authors, I was able to fix my desk, and now I obviously am able to work again. In fact, I spent more time writing this review than fixing my desk.

Thanks guys!

P.S. One more use you might consider for huge books like this: if you get papers wet, they tend to dry in a rippled shape. However, if you dry them off mostly, blow dry them a bit, and then stick them under a pile of huge heavy books, they'll dry mostly flat. Happy drying!

Rating:
Summary: Comprensive Resource
Review: Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine 16th Edition edited by Dennis L. Kasper et al (McGraw-Hill Professional) This behemoth standard textbook and reference work of Internal medicine is written with such comprehensiveness and reasonable clarity that lay people can consult it with profit when needing to research diagnosis and to discover treatment modalities for their condition.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: I'm an Italian medical student and I'm going to finish at university this summer.Well I'm working on my thesis and a few weeks ago I went to a great old Professor of Internal Medicine to ask for some explanations and advices about the drawing up of the text and about medical resources to use for my thesis.
He told me "what have you found?" and I "well many articles from many journals.." "Ok and other?" "I read specific chapters on many books..." And the Prof "There's only a book". He stood up, went to a small bookcase and came back with the Harrison!

Rating:
Summary: As usual, one of the best...
Review: Of course there are other textbooks out there that can be of use too, but Harrison's has always been the gold standard. Beware of people telling you to use more "interesting" material; Harrison's can only be boring to those who are either not really interested in learning internal medicine, or those who have just given up on trying to become the best practitioner they can be.
If you are interested in learning, then this is one of the books you must have.

Rating:
Summary: comprehensive textbook
Review: The book is well written, comprehensively referenced, and will fir in well with the harrisons series, evidence based medicine comes to the fore and the treatment listed for conditions are comprehensive with a fairly balanced view of the effictiveness. It is large, and given the computer age the cd rom may well be more popular, and the pda version when available should also be usefull. As a reference or text I would reccomend this textbook.