Medical Microbiology

I used this book for my undergrad class and luckily my med school also uses this. As well as my husband has a previous copy that he used in med school. The text is very thorough, although it was lacking in a basic classification of bacteria, that would have been nice. (Like a chart of all gram - on one side and all gram +). Just gave a previous edition to a physician for reference and he loves it! I used this book in conjunction with clinical micro made simple and I have to say, I love both these books. Diagrams are clear, sometimes some of the topics are a bit jumbled (like immunology). There aren't alot of images either so you may need to supplement. That shouldn't be a problem though. This text is better if you have a basics of micro already down, definitely a higher level micro book or grad book. I would recommend!

The first thing to understand about this book is that it is a textbook and a difficult one. The difficulty for the beginning student or general reader is not a fault of the authors. Rather it is because medical microbiology itself is a daunting subject full of organisms that can only be seen fuzzily with an electron microscope, if at all, organisms involved in processes and behaviors that are foreign to our everyday experience. Add the fact that most of the material covered here is not part of a non-specialist curriculum either in high school or college, and effectively speaking the untrained reader is starting from scratch.Well, why do that? First of all, because the material itself--how viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other infectious organisms enter the body, replicate, and cause disease--is fascinating and of immediate relevance to our lives. Second because (to my knowledge) there is little or nothing else available to the general reader that goes beyond a sketchy introduction to the subject. One is forced to read a text book. Fortunately this is a good one and it is thorough.The text covers the range of infectious disease from viruses to tapeworms. The amount of technical information presented is daunting, and the sheer expanse of terminology a challenge (why is there no glossary?). The text is lavishly illustrated with photos and electron micrographs of the pathogens, as well as numerous schematic drawings showing how microorganisms cause disease, how they replicate, their chemical structure, their morphology, etc. The instructional schematic drawings I found less valuable than the electron micrographs, but I suspect for the student of microbiology it might be the other way around.What you'll get out of this handsome book depends on how much time and energy you are able to devote to it. I started reading this in the hope that I would, perhaps by osmosis, pick up some feel for life at the micron level, and I did. Obviously if I had been able to study the text with the help of an instructor, I would have learned a lot more.

Without questions, this superlative text ranks among the finest and the most up-to-date package on medical microbiology. It demonstrates that this interesting branch of medicine can be both versatile and concise. The book is full of valuable illustrations which students can depend on for quick revisions. Ubiquitous tables, colourful charts and figures all help to accelerate comprehension. Also, there are two additional sections whose chapters handled Immunology and Parasitology in significant detail.No single textbook may be without shortcomings, but I sincerely recommend this one.

Title says it all. Excellent book for the microbiology student looking at infectious diseases. This book also comes with good use of pictures to describe diseases and their effects. I also would recommend Sherris Medical Microbiology - probably is slightly better, but has no pictures of what infectious disease symptoms look like, would need Atlas of Infectious Diseases the co-inside with that book.