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Notes on our reviewers
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BOOK REVIEWS With the private consulting room (ofice) as the setting, Dr Goldwyn commences with some philosophical considerations of the patient’s initial consultation with the surgeon and some practical advice on how it should be conducted. There follows a revue of the features that are special to patients who seek aesthetic surgery and advice on their selection for treatment (the latter reiterating the list of patients to be rejected, the length of which makes the reader question whether he may ever find a patient on whom he may safely operate). Over half the book is taken up with an account of the range of aesthetic and reconstructive operations with which Dr Goldwyn is most familiar: about the patients, what to tell them preoperatively, how to examine them, what to tell them postoperatively, how to charge them and so on. This third section concludes with well written and good advice on how to deal with the situation when things go wrong-no doubt gleaned from his editorship of “The Unfavourable Result in Plastic Surgery”. Finally, Dr Goldwyn gives salutory warnings to the plastic surgeon for each of the three decades of his career lest he become over-ambitious, over-confident or over-aged. A bibliography, mostly referred to in the text by numbers, is of little value. This is a book of basic, common-sense, surgical doctoring which extols the pleasure and satisfaction to be had by the surgeon of “knowing his patient” and makes good points on how to do so. It would be presumptuous to criticise its contents for it is one man’s view that can be used by others as a yard-stick against which to measure and argue their own. In this respect it would have been better had Dr Goldwyn
kept to the first person throughout for some readers may feel patronised by his sporadic use of the second person. The colloquial style makes it a rather tedius book to read and at times the meaning of the text is difficult to understand. Although the author does not state for whom the book has been written it is clearly aimed at the American surgeon. But all of us can benefit from both its practical advice and its message of empathy. DAVID L. HARRIS
Notes on our Reviewers R. L. Batten, FRCS, Late Consultant
Orthopaedic Surgeon, _ General Hospital, Birmingham. Editor of I&-y. J. P. Bennett. FRCS. Consultant Plastic Surgeon. The Oueen Victoria Hospital, blastic Surgery and Ja; Injuries C&tre, East Grinstead, Sussex and King’s College Hospital, London. David L. Harris, MS, FRCS, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Department of Plastic Surgery, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. John Lendrum, MA, FRCS, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, University Hospital of South Manchester, Withington Hospital, Manchester.
BOOK REVIEWS With the private consulting room (ofice) as the setting, Dr Goldwyn commences with some philosophical considerations of the patient’s initial consultation with the surgeon and some practical advice on how it should be conducted. There follows a revue of the features that are special to patients who seek aesthetic surgery and advice on their selection for treatment (the latter reiterating the list of patients to be rejected, the length of which makes the reader question whether he may ever find a patient on whom he may safely operate). Over half the book is taken up with an account of the range of aesthetic and reconstructive operations with which Dr Goldwyn is most familiar: about the patients, what to tell them preoperatively, how to examine them, what to tell them postoperatively, how to charge them and so on. This third section concludes with well written and good advice on how to deal with the situation when things go wrong-no doubt gleaned from his editorship of “The Unfavourable Result in Plastic Surgery”. Finally, Dr Goldwyn gives salutory warnings to the plastic surgeon for each of the three decades of his career lest he become over-ambitious, over-confident or over-aged. A bibliography, mostly referred to in the text by numbers, is of little value. This is a book of basic, common-sense, surgical doctoring which extols the pleasure and satisfaction to be had by the surgeon of “knowing his patient” and makes good points on how to do so. It would be presumptuous to criticise its contents for it is one man’s view that can be used by others as a yard-stick against which to measure and argue their own. In this respect it would have been better had Dr Goldwyn
kept to the first person throughout for some readers may feel patronised by his sporadic use of the second person. The colloquial style makes it a rather tedius book to read and at times the meaning of the text is difficult to understand. Although the author does not state for whom the book has been written it is clearly aimed at the American surgeon. But all of us can benefit from both its practical advice and its message of empathy. DAVID L. HARRIS
Notes on our Reviewers R. L. Batten, FRCS, Late Consultant
Orthopaedic Surgeon, _ General Hospital, Birmingham. Editor of I&-y. J. P. Bennett. FRCS. Consultant Plastic Surgeon. The Oueen Victoria Hospital, blastic Surgery and Ja; Injuries C&tre, East Grinstead, Sussex and King’s College Hospital, London. David L. Harris, MS, FRCS, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Department of Plastic Surgery, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. John Lendrum, MA, FRCS, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, University Hospital of South Manchester, Withington Hospital, Manchester.