Essentials of General Surgery
You don’t have to be a doctor to get a kick out of this book. Peter Lawrence isn’t a bad writer at all, and his colleagues who do different articles with him and help making up the questions and answers (many of them multiple choice, including some surprising zingers to see if you’re awake) are also fairly competent at writing and know how to make a dry subject alive.
HRecently, when I was in the hospital and my doctors were trying to figure out what kind of procedure I should be having (to correct a leaky heart), a friend brought me this book to read while I tried to make the leaden hours go by quicker. Its attractive cover and easy-to-follow medical style convinced him that the more I knew about what might be happening to me, the better my mind would be able to cushion the shocks. You know what? My fingers quickly found themselves wrapped around the book’s four corners and the hands of the clock fairly sped by as I acquainted myself with all sorts of interesting operations, from vacsular to gastric and even into plastic surgery, which by the way isn’t as simple and brainless as you would think! I’m impressed by how difficult this vanity procedure is. However, surgery isn’t child’s play and the newbie to medical terms will probably get bogged down just trying to figure out what part of the body Dr. L is talking about from page to page. It will be a long time before I feel confident enough to pursue the next volume in this series, ESSENTIALS OF SURGICAL SPECIALTIES.
It all turned out well, and with this book on my shelf when visitors come by they sometimes ask if at one time when I was young I trained as a surgeon, only to wash out. The book’s cover painting is of course by Thomas Eakins, it is his famous painting of THE GROSS CLINIC, painted at a time when surgery was undergoing rapid transformation, at a time right on the cusp of change. Of course you can see that none of the surgeons working on the poor patient are wearing scrubs nor any kind of hygienic clothes. They are all in street clothes and as you can tell, germs were still a vague concept to the Philadelphia surgeons of the day!
In your library, this volume should be an essential! Even if you have no interest in medicine, either personal or professional.
