Customer Reviews

Medical Microbiology / 2nd Edition

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

This is an excellent text for the medical student. I used it with success in my clinical microbiology course and can recommend it to any other medical students looking for a comprehensive microbiology text.

This text is well written with a logical sequence and provides detailed information without being superfluous. The only drawback for the non-American student (like me) is that all the epidemiological data is American and some important microbial causes of diseases not endemic in the USA are not included.

All in all, an excellent introductory text for clinical microbiology and infectious disease.

This is a great book for students...because it's not heavy! Seriously, the chapters are short and concise,heavenly stuff when you're cramming the night before exams.The writing is clear and focused...it doesn't meander off into extreme details. The illustrations are self explanatory...and the pictures are graphic and gross...like they should be in a infectious disease textbook. Too bad there aren't more of them!

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!

This book covers every medical microbiology topic that is needed for class exams or the USLME. The book is intensely filled with very elaborated information that any medical student needs to pass his or her exams. My study group and I also used the following for class exams and the USLME and found it extremely helpful. I also purchased this book on amazon which is the following:
Microbiology Study Guide: Key Review Questions and Answers by Patrick Leonardi (ISBN: 0971999635)
The questions in this study guide were on target with my class exams and was an excellent reference for the USLME. Buy both books. Most definitely!!

I purchased this book for my own use and found it to be rather invaluable.

This is very direct-to-the-point and concise. The only problem I noticed was as others have mentioned, the pictures are not very clear, sometimes difficult to make out what you are looking at, but the value of this book overall makes that easy to overlook.


This is an easy book to get into, very informative, I guess some might consider it bland because it is indeed in textbook form, it still remains a valuable learning and resource tool. I'd recommend this to anyone!

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.

This book is a great resource book for any medical student to have on their shelves. I agree with many of the other comments that it is not an easy book. This more because of the massive extent of information, not the method of writing. Overall it's easy to read, which is why I refer to it as my reference book. I did rather well in my micro class using mostly class notes and Medical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple mostly because the typical medical student just doesn't have enough time to thoroughly use this text. However, any time I had a question, this book could answer it. It saved me a lot of time tracking down the various professors to ask questions. It has great "green boxes" that summarize the virulence, epidemiology, disease, diagnosis, and treatment for each bacteria and virus. I definitely plan on using those for reviewing. The end of each unit (bacteria, virus, fungi, parasites) summarizes the role of that microbe in disease which is basically charts of differentials for pneumonia, diarrhea, ect..but very useful when transistioning to clinical thinking.

The companion question book was great too. The questions were typically harder than my exams (which I should note Dr. Rosenthal was my course coordinator so that was a nice surprise) but helped me discover gaps in my understanding.

I don't know if this is the best book but I certainly don't have any huge complaints. And I repeat, it's my reference book not my main study source. Definitely get Ridiculously Simple and First Aid...both have great memory tips for highly detailed subject.

Unfortunately this book seems to be the best full-length textbook available on this subject. But I have to dis-recommend it anyway, above all because of the low quality of the illustrations. The writing is generally pretty clear and not overly intricate, so the book serves fairly well as a reference. But don't try to learn from it as a first pass - it's just not put together well enough.

The main rival of this book is another book with the same title, "Medical Microbiology" by Mims. Unfortunately Mims is even worse, organized by organ systems rather than by genus and species as Murray's is. At least Murray's doesn't jumble up all the different pathogens into a liquid mix of terminology.

Really the book that most medical students use is "Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple", which may seem low-tech, but is actually readable. Maybe with Murray's as a backup resource for fact-checking.