Symptoms of Disease in Childhood

My initial enthusiasm for this book, which is intended as a teaching aid and a successor to Illingworth's classic Common Symptoms of Disease in Childhood, soon waned. Interactive, problem solving, and computer assisted techniques of medical teaching have not entirely displaced the need for textbooks, but to succeed these must have a visual impact and present information in a readable and enjoyable format. “What no pictures; no diagrams!” was the comment of one trainee to whom I showed it. He has a point; a good clinical photograph is worth a lot of words.

It is difficult to avoid the impression that …