This book is volume 4 of a four-volume series entitled, Medical Treatment, being a text of multiple authorship by contributors closely associated with Guy's Hospital, London. It includes sections dealing with antibiotics and chemotherapy, bacterial and viral infections, diseases of the meninges and nervous system, psychiatric illness, and iatrogenic disease. Unfortunately, three years have elapsed between publication of volumes 1 and 4. Furthermore, I have several criticisms of this text, some dealing with concept and structure, and others with specific content.
To begin, the American physician will be bothered by reference to drugs with which he is unfamiliar; some can be identified in Goodman and Gilman as being available only in Europe; others cannot be identified at all. In two instances, nonproprietary names for common drugs are different from those used here. The international nonproprietary term pethidine is used for meperidine (Demerol), for example, and sulfifurazole is used for