Customer Reviews

Physiology, 5e

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

 

 

The key to selecting a useful textbook for physiology lies in knowing the depth of knowledge you actually need. Having gone through med school and learnt physiology as part of the course, i actually found that Berne & Levy was really too detailed to use as a primary text. I used B&L, Ganong, and Guyton primarily as references when i needed more in depth detail on certain topics. An excellent book for undergraduates is a text by the author Sherwood. This book gives an excellent conceptual account of human physiology, so that you understand the principles. In books like B&L, it's easy to lose the big picture in all the detail, particularly as a student when it's all new material.

Having said that, i'm now using B&L along with several other texts to study for my anesthesiology exams. It undoubtedly has the best cardiovascular chapter of any physiology text.

Take home message is that if you are studying physiology for postgraduate purposes, you'll probably need B&L as well as several other texts. As a student, i'd recommend using a more basic text and consulting B&L for the fine print.

Dr A.M.

After reading this book, I was able to understand cardiovascular physiology at last. I tried Ganong before, but Ganong is just full of facts without any explanations. Ganong is just a review for those who know cardiovascular physiology. Berne and Levy is the book if you want to learn and understand cardiovascular physiology.

I am currently a medical student, and Physiology is on our required texts list. It's an awful read. Very dry, very dense. Difficult to keep interested from one scattered clinical tidbit to the next. PLUS, there were multiple mistakes in just the few chapters I made myself go through. Thinking about petitioning for a new text listing for next year's class...

I am a first year CRNA student. This book is fabulous for getting the main point across and leaving nothing out. I would recommend it for any student looking for a great physiology text.

I study pharmacy in University of Brasilia and this book is great for all the organic systems except nervous. This is the book adopted in courses of Physio 1 and 2, and this was a good choice. I THINK NOT ONLY MEDICAL STUDENTS CAN READ IT AND THEY CAN LEARN MANY THINGS IN BOTH MACROSCOPIC AND MICROSCOPIC SCALES. The text includes the molecular processes that are so important to be understood by us. The book is very deep really, and if you want to learn to your life and job, not only to pass a test, it's excellent. However, I didn't like the order of the subjects, for me it's easier to understand reading the biophysical foundations first and the consequences after. For example, in section of Cardiovascular System, the chapter of Hemodynamics is after many comments about velocity, pression and flux of blood that cannot be understood without biophysical comments.