Medical Engineering by Charles Dean Ray (review)

BOOK REVIEWS MedicalEngineering. By Charles Dean Ray, Editor in Chief. Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1974. Pp. xxvii + 1256. $90.00. Many years ago I discovered Otto Glasser's Medical Physics, first in one volume, then in two volumes, and later in a three-volume set. This book was like a collection of old recipes that one could refer to from time to time when he forgot how to make some piece of apparatus like a colorimeter or a pH meter or make some such device work when it was being recalcitrant. It was forever out of date but it was always refreshing to find some aspect within that book that would give one insights into the problem that he was facing. It was the only way to go for such difficulties, and likely as not one would find something that would help. The editor of this compendium makes a similar observation. He is somewhat younger than I, and I am sure made contact with Medical Physics at a later date, but, like me, he appreciated the input at the time he needed it. I think it is impossible to review in depth a book such as this. It is probably more appropriate to ask oneself, "What is the value of such a book at this time?" It is interesting to me that at the time this book was given to me to review I had been searching for a new and fresh copy of Glasser's MedicalPhysics because I felt the need for such in my daily work, but one was not available. In the last month or two since I have had Medical Engineering, I have put it to use in a number of circumstances and have found it a valuable book. I cannot say that it is well written or that it covers all the subjects that it ought to. These are really beyond my capability of evaluation. It suffices to say that in every instance that I have asked a question of the book it has come up with source material which has provided me with what I needed. Without question, a book containing the variety and array of topics covered in Medical Engineering is likely as not to skip someone's pet ideas or to, if not that, give short shrift to someone's greatest interest, and as a result it will fall under severe criticism. Simply by weight alone (about 6 pounds) it contains a wide variety of facts and explanations. It is well organized. Chapters are relatively short, covering limited areas and are distinctly to the point. By now, without question, many areas are out of date and will have to be updated when the book is re-edited. For now, however, it is a very fine book for the general medical person as well as for the researcher, ft contains the source material that one would need as a clinician who is a sometime researcher and to some degree to the researcher who is a sometime clinician. It is easy to pass off a book such as this as being shallow and lacking in perspective. However, for those of us who are bioengineering neophytes and who will never move beyond that point, there has been nothing since Glasser's Medical Physics as suitable as Medical Engineering. It is a splendid gift for those of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1976 | 285 us who like to be involved with a more in-depth understanding of the variety of techniques and procedures that we are using and that biomedical engineering has brought to us in the last several years. I enjoyed this book and I recommend it to other clinicians as a great help and at least an appreciation of the many problems which we cause for ourselves in relationship to measurement of the vast number of parameters now available in clinical medicine. Donald W. Benson, M.D., Ph.D. Department of Anesthesiology University of Chicago Modern Problems in Paediatrics: Nutrition, Growth and Development. Edited by Cipriano A. Canosa. Basel: S. Karger, 1975. Pp. 272. $35.75. This handsome volume in the familiar Karger format summarizes the proceedings of the International Symposium of...