Introduction — How to Use this Book for Reference

Abstract

A guide to differential diagnosis, unless it ran to several volumes, could never encompass all aspects of every known form of disorder or disease. The common disorders and illnesses, however, wherever they are met, share the specific characteristics of common symptoms and signs that can be elicited in taking the patient’s history and in the physical examination that follows. In general an illness will affect one or other of the patient’s major physical systems and this book provides reference systematically to the common disorders and illnesses — by listing the symptoms and signs and describing the routine diagnostic investigations. As a revision course in preparing for examinations, the major differential aspects of diagnoses are listed in the text and tabled at the end of the relevant chapters. As a guide to the key laboratory investigations in diagnosis, the chapters and the tables detail the routines that would apply in confirming the suspicion formed by examination of the patient. No book, however, will ever replace the wisdom gained by experience in the practice of medicine and all practitioners will need to constantly update their knowledge of medical science by continued reading of the relevant literature.