This compendium features more than 20,000 current medical terms, many of which are generally not included in ordinary medical dictionaries or only briefly and inadequately defined. Focusing on the real-world language of practice, and including coverage of basic science, the Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine provides readable, comprehensible definitions of terminology, jargon, acronyms, neologisms, and casual speech heard in today's practice.
I started writing medical disctionaries in 1984, when I was a resident (registrar) in pathology in New York and at the time figured I'd write one book, following Jose Marti's dictum: "Plant a tree, write a book..." get it out of my system and that would be that...
Just...one...little...dictionary. It would take 6 months of work, max, and have maybe 150 pages of manuscript
Was I wrong!
Seven years and 7000 pages of manuscript later, I put the first iteration of the book on the shelf as The Dictionary of Modern Medicine (1992, Parthenon, UK). It had 12,000 entries, and covered a skeleton "soup to nuts" of medicine (informatics, molecular biology, forensics...you name it). I taught myself medical illustration, because I couldn't afford to pay a proper artist. I must say the illustrations weren't bad...
In 1994, I updated the dictionary and entered into a licensing agreement with Simon and Schuster's (and later, McGraw-Hill's) medical division. Jamie Mount, my then editor twisted my arm into agreeing to the title of Current Medtalk (Appleton & Lange, 1995), by which time the DTP-based pool of information had grown to 18,000 entries. The material was all in a DTP environment and becoming increasingly unwieldy. At Jamie's request, I spun off a Dictionary of Alternative Medicine, which was oddly enough, relatively east work, given that not many of the alternative therapies stand up to statistical scrutiny. I revised the Alternative project recently and re-released it as an electronic only book. I expect to incorporate evidence-based scrutiny in the next edition, because honestly, there are a lot of charlatans out there who claim to cure people with potions and magic, but alternative therapies don't work that well.
I published a further update of The Dictionary of Modern Medicine with 23,000 entries in 2006, after which time my 15-year arrangement with McGraw-Hill ended.
I continued collecting material, but eventually (I'm a slow learner) realised that the DTP environment isn't designed for the constant revision of material that medical dictionaries must undergo, so in 2009, I began porting the material over to Filemaker Pro to begin exclusively electronic publishing. When the material is in a database, you can put new edition of a book in under an hour; very impressive. Or if you want to fancy it up with different sized fonts and styles, it will take a few days tops
I kicked out the very first spin-off from the database last year under the title The Doctor's Dictionary. I cannot begin to describe how cool that project is. I can only suggest that you try a sample of material from the Apple or the Kindle bookstore (go ahead, it's free). At this point, the database has 99,695 entries. I'm growing it at the rate of 1500 to 3000 terms per month. I've already passed the Taber's in terms of sheer numbers (I think they have 65,000 terms, not to mention they're more expensive), and have the Stedman's (107,000) in my crosshairs. I expect to produce the next spin-off of the database by the end of May; I think you'll like it, but like Apple, which plays its upcoming products close to the chest, you'll have to wait for the title. I will however give you a hint:
The Dictionary of I I I I I I H Medicine. I'll drop another hint in 6 weeks, so y'all come back soon, ya hear?
I'm revising for the RCPathology exam at the moment, and living like a complete hermit in Coventry
