Customer Reviews

Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This guide is the only general medical guide you will need for your family. It has great symptom charts, pictures, explanations, information, & instructions for thousands of situations. It is an emergency medical guide, a compilation of articles by medical experts, & an all-round great source of medical information. I love this book! We're buying more for presents.

A visit to the doctor always makes us very conscious of how much time is wasted. The time you take off from work, the time you spend in the waiting room the time you spend waiting for the doctor to come and actually talk to you for a few minutes. Then we find ourselves sudden incapable of describing accurately our aches and pains. This all happens after we finally decide to go see a doctor because we are not sure if we know enough to deal with the problem on our own. Calling your mother to find out what to do is not always an option. The "Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide" is a great help for dealing with health concerns in this Era of Managed Care. The volume deals with information about diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease in all stages of life. The information is presented in a very user-friendly manner, with over 900 illustrations, covering: (1) questions to discuss with your doctor; (2) first-aid and emergency advice; (3) symptom charts to determine if and when to call the doctor; (4) home remedies and alternative medicine; and (5) drug-interaction charts to prevent dangerous drug-drug, drug-food, and drug-herb interactions.

I have used this book to save myself from a trip to the doctor, to identify a rash on one of my children, and to better understand my father's hearing problems. This "Family Health Guide" has proven itself both useful and easy to use, and I am someone who never took even biology in school and who therefore finds medicine to be as mysterious as any other science. Every household should have this book, or something very much like it. One final advantage of this particular volume is that this "book" never goes out of date because you can get page and index searched for updated information on every entry from a website.

This is an incredible anthology of illnesses. When my mom was diagnosed with leukemia, I read the entire section on the subject. It helped me to understand the type of leukemia she had, what other forms were, what questions to ask her doctor, and what her likely prognosis would be. I discovered she had a 1:5 chance of survival, and I used that information to make my last days with her really count.

I also appreciate the guide to diagnosising your own illnesses. It helps to understand what different symptoms MIGHT mean, and what to ask your doctor.

I can't emphasize enough the value this volume has. Understanding illnesses your loved ones may be experiencing is invaluable.

I bought this book because I wanted a reference guide for all of the health concerns I have and may have. Its incredibly thorough and its easy to use. The only criticism I have is that no matter what symptoms you have, the book's answer to everything is to see a doctor. It might be helpful for them to go more into detail on what you can do about something before you go in, or home remedies.

This is a comprehensive guide on the latest protocols in medicine
for a plethora of illnesses. Each section describes the applicable body system, diseases of the system, treatment options and alternative medicinal approaches to the conventional treatment options. This volume is perfect if you have an undiagnosed condition to research or you've been advised of a difficult illness to treat/manage. Extensive flowcharts depict
symptoms, required action and research options for getting more
information on the subject. Breathing systems and hormonal
mechanisms are charted in full color. The digestive system is set
forth in step-by-step detail- also in full color.

For a life-long condition like ankylosing spondylitis, the authors describe treatment with methotrexate or joint surgery
and rehabilitation. Infectious arthritis has a classical
bacterial component and inflammations of body systems.
Rehabilitation may focus on fixed joints, cartilaginous joints
or the synovial joints.

Urinary tract infections may be treated medicinally or with
cranberries in the case of cystitis. This volume is a goldmine
difficult to replicate. For this reason, the purchase is a worthy
one for your personal library.

If you have one medical reference in your home, the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide is the one to have. For years I used the highly technical Merck Manual, along with the AMA Home Medical Encyclopedia. Excuse the Goldilocks allusion but one was "too hard" and the other "too soft." The Harvard guide is "just right." The organization of the book allows for easy navigation. The symptom charts are very helpful and lead you to appropriate sections on diseases and disorders. You learn enough about your health issues and possible treatments to visit your doctor as an informed patient with the right questions. Excellent illustrations and photographs enhance the text. Kudos to the writers and editors for giving us a truly useful guide.
Marianne G.
Chicago, IL

Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide is an excellent source of information on medical topics for the common people. Written in plain, simple English, the book gives information on diseases, their prevention and treatment, when to call the doctor and when to try home remedies, and how best to deal with certain ailments for which there is no cure available. The book has many easy to understand flow-charts and numerous illustrations of body parts and their locations, many of which are in color. From expert advice to home remedies, from pregnancy and childbirth to living will and how to deal with death, from drug interaction to important telephone numbers, the book has it all.

I found the book so useful that I bought a second copy and gave it as a gift to my daughter who has her own family. One important advantage of the book is that it will never go out of date as a supplementary online version is available which always includes the latest medical theories and developments.

The only negative point is the book's quality of binding. For a book that thick (1288 pages), the binding is not strong. Both the copies I bought broke at the spine in a few days! The contents of the book deserves a 5 stars rating. But because of its poor binding, I am giving it 4 stars.

Komaroff is a great physician, researcher and academic. That said, I was a bit disappointed with the entry on ME/CFIDS, which is a specialty of his. It is much better than some other texts but does not highlight enough the dangers of exercise and the inefficacy of the type of CBT often prescribed. More information on the phsyiological basis of the disease would be nice.

This is a 1312 page reference book and I do not claim to have read it cover-to-cover. One refers to it as the needs arise.
It is packed with information and has many line illustrations as well as a number of photographs and color plates. In most cases it seems to delve into subjects with more than enough detail in a clear and concise way although there have been instances when I could have used more information. The 'Symtom Charts' are helpful, although every one ends with 'see your doctor', but they do also give other reference pages to consult. It is definately the type of book every household should have on hand.
Another book of this type which I would recommend is Merck Manual of Medical Information.

This is a large, comprehensive medical guide written by top experts in the field, attractively designed, and truly user- friendly. I recommed it highly as a volume to have at home, as a help in maintaining and improving health, and in initially seeking understanding of any symptoms one might have. It also provides guidance on health- care systems, on diagnosis of various conditions, on prevention of illness.
The flow-chart system used to check out a particular set of symptoms and see where they lead is very clearly done.
With all this I would caution that self- diagnosis is a dangerous business, and substituting one's own faulty medical knowledge, one's little learning for professional help can be a dangerous thing.
Learn and use this book but only as supplementary tool to proper medical care.