Medical microbiology

717 and impart a more practical orientation by including chapters on clinical syndromes, laboratory diagnostic procedures, strategies of antimicrobial chemotherapy, community and hospital infections, and immunization. On the whole, the panel of 50, mainly British, authors have carried out the difficult task of distilling their detailed and expert knowledge into a few pages to good effect, and the editors appear to have encouraged consistency in the structure and format of chapters. The text is readable and for the most part up to date, although there were some notable omissions-for examnle, the failure even to mention some of the newer molecular techniques for bacterial typing. The illustrations are clear (although some are possibly allocated a disproportionate amount of space). The references are appropriate and up to date, and the index is useful. My main criticisms lie in the balance of the contents (for -example the sections on antimicrobial chemotherapy are surprisingly brief, in a text book edited by Greenwood which is aimed at medical students, who may never see an electron microscope after training, but will almost certainly prescribe antibiotics every day) and the constraints of the taxonomic format as opposed to a system-oriented approach. Who should buy this book? It is apparently aimed at ‘medical students and microbiologists’. It is perhaps too detailed and, although reasonably priced, too expensive for the former, for whom it represents but one small portion of a crowded curriculum, and insufficiently detailed for those who subsequently specialize in infectious diseases and microbiology. It would provide a useful insight into the clinical world~for microbiology technicians. Certainly all laboratories would do well to buv a cony, and medical school libraries should probably have several. I would also recommend it to medical students with a particular interest in infection, and to those embarking on a career in this field. althouah thev should regard the contents as a starting’point f& further training rather than an end point. D. A. B. Dance Medical Microbiology. C. A. Mims, J. H. L. Playfair, I. M. Roitt, D. Wakelin & R. Williams. London: Mosby Europe, 1993. viii+592 pp. Price E24.95. ISBN 0-39744631-4. The authors claim in their preface that this ‘is a brand new type of medical microbiology textbook’, a claim with which I entirely agree. Instead of being arranged systematically, microbe by microbe, this book is arranged in sections covering various aspects of the host-microbe interaction. The book is unusual, also, in dealing not only with viruses and nrokarvotes but also including nathogenic protozoa, fungi and even helminths and a;thropods; and it deals with them summarily but adequately. I tried it out with the nrotozoa, the groun with which I am most familiar, and apart from some necessary over-simnliiication and one inconsistencv (in Fie. 3.33 T. rhodeiiense and T. gambiense are treateh as species, while in Fig. 3.41 they are reduced to subspecies) it passed the test pretty well. The major sections are ‘The Adversaries’, which includes ‘The Microbes’ and ‘Host Defence Mechanisms’. ‘Conflicts’, which covers routes of infection, defensive procedures both natural and immunological, replication and spread, parasite survival and pathogenesis, ‘Diagnosis and Clinical Manifestations’, in which the diseases are dealt with according to the organ systems which they affect, ‘Control’, which includes a chapter by Professor Roy Anderson on epidemiology, and an appendix which describes in summary form the main pathogens discussed in the book and includes protocols for specimen examination. This last section is heavily bacteriaoriented: the section on blood does not even mention malaria. Each chapter ends with a short list of further reading. This is a large book-about 600 A4 size pages and (according to the publishers-I didn’t count them) 830 illustrations, nearly all in colour (some of these are really Tables, but even these are printed in two or more colours).

It is an attractive book-the coloured micrographs and photographs are splendid and numerous [here I must declare an interest, since some of those of protozoa are from my own collection]. I think the book would make an excellent text for medical and biology students and a useful means of updating their knowledge for more ‘mature’ doctors and scientists like myself. The index is good (11 pages of small type) and the price is admirably low. An accompanying atlas of 35 mm slides, based on the book’s illustrations, is available from the publishers and would make an admirable teaching aid, I am sure. John Baker Atlas of Medical Parasitology (3rd edition). Viqar Zaman. Sinaanore: Sineanore Universitv Press. 1992. ix+250 pp.-Price S $lzO:OO/ US$ 120.60 (hardback). ISBN 9971-69-161-2. The third edition of this well-known atlas has, as the author writes in the preface, been completely rewritten and contains many new illustrations-mainly electron micrographs, clinical photographs and life cycle diagrams. The book is divided into 3 sections: life cycle drawings (23), coloured photographs and photomicrographs (and one ‘computer-enhanced image with inserted psuedo-colours’ of [presumably] a scanning electron micrograph of a Toxoplasma gondii microgamete (263, on 67 plates), and black and white illustrations (mostly electron micrographs) (234, on 117 plates). The large (A4) format and use-of glossy paper have enabled excellent reproduction of the illustrations, for which the minters (Ludwinia Printer Pte Ltd, Singapore) should becongratulated. The text is kept to a minimum, and the author advises readers to consult textbooks also. The life cycle diagrams are very diagrammatic, and are printed in rather lurid colours which, in manv cases. seem to bear little relationship to what one sees-through a microscope. However, thev are clear and adeauate for their nurnose. The hiah spot of the book is undoubtedly the colour photographs and micrographs in section 2. The quality of these is superb. The legends are minimal, and make no concession to ‘modern’ taxonomic thinking-no subgenera for trypanosomes and leishmanial parasites, for example. A few things made me unhappy. There are rather more misprints than I should like to see, and rather more mis-spellings of parasites’ names (e.g., Zodamoeba burschlii, Encephalitozoon cunnicula, Sparaganum, Gnathostoma spinegerum, Capillaria phillipenesis [and C. phillipenensis], Cysticercus cellulosa). Rather sadly, micrometer is abbreviated as urn throughout the book. One misprint must have caused the publishers a near heart attack: on p. 61, the Figure legends have been printed in the reverse order to that of the micrographs on the facing page, and the error has been corrected by pasting in a strip with the numbers in the correct order, but running serially from the bottom to the top of the page. In spite of these nit-pickings, the book fulfills its avowed intention of being ‘an illustrated guide’ and not a full textbook. The index, on 4 pages and m 2 columns, is adequate. However, if I were shopping with limited funds for an atlas of this tvne. I should find the latest (paperback) edition of that&by Peters & Gilles better value (see the review in the Transactions, 85, 412-413 (1991)). John Baker Atlas of Human Protozoa. E. G. Rondanelli and M. Scaglia. (editors). Milan, Italy: Masson, 1993. xvi+556 gpigf,‘,” Italian lira 300 000 (c. &130). ISBN %X-214I found this a difficult book to review. It is sumptuously produced (for once, ‘sumptuous’ seems the appropriate word), with over 500 ACsized pages of coated paper, with colour on about half of them. The general scheme is that each parasite is allotted an introductory _page, -. with its taxonomy and coloured distribution dianram, followed by a series of double-page spreads with coloured illustrations on the right hand page and brief explanatory notes on the left page. The illustrations con-