There are also overviews of areas of medical specialty, such as Opthamology and Neurology . These summary articles describe the field, trace its history and development, and give a synopsis of the types of conditions the specialist treats. Several articles describe the practice of medicine in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Line drawings and charts accompany some entries. Nobel prizes for physiology and medicine are given in a useful chart.
Appendixes list medical and professional abbreviations.
The British origin of the book is evident in the list of contributors, the British spelling of words, and the focus on British medicine and medical practice. This focus is balanced somewhat by comparisons with the U.S. in many of the articles. The long articles are readable and easily understood by the layperson, but the definitions of medical terms use clinical language that demands specialized knowledge. Definitions are cross-referenced using see and see also . Asterisks before a word indicate internal cross-references.