Book Reviews

A Guide to Clinical Reasoning. By Maurice Kraytman. Hightstown, NJ: McGraw-Hill, 1981.561 pages.

Many attempts have been made to design a concise pocket manual covering general medical topics that can be used effectively on a daily basis by the ward physician. Dr. Kraytman sets out to accomplish that goal in this book.

The book appears to be directed to the medical student in the clinical years and the resident early in training. Its greatest potential usefulness is to residents in family medicine and internal medicine. The emphasis is placed on, in the author’s words, “elusive diagnostic pointers and

misleading manifestations” of various clinical entities. The approach is unusual in that atypical and variant presen- tations are stressed rather than the classic features of a particular disease. The author does partially accomplish his goal in alerting the clinician to puzzling variants De- spite this, the book fails to be an all-inclusive “pocket guide” and will prove helpful only as another general ref- erence book. The abbreviations are particularly difficult to comprehend and use efficiently. The book may be useful as an addition to the library of a young clinicsian, but it is not the book to keep in one’s white coat pocket.

Mitchell Henry, MD

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