Francis Books

This book is ideal if you haven't got a clue about differential diagnosis. It is bringing together all the pathophysiology knowledge into daily practice. The cases are really good and well explained, leading the reader through the diagnostic thinking process. This is how patients will present themselves to you.

I am a 4th year chiropractic student. i learned so much from this rivoting book; not in the least part because i had to look up SO many words in a medical dictionary (which really improved my medical vocabulary)!!
Each 'chapter' is really short so you don't fall asleep trying to read about something (still took me a couple weeks to go thru the entire book in detail because like i said i spent a lot of time looking up vocabulary). the case studies aren't easy to 'guess'. best medical book that i've read! the people who wrote it have GREAT clinical knowledge; very inspirational, make's me 'want to do it' too. Vive le DDx!

This is an excellent book on the TV audience and should be included on every media studies teacher's syllabus. Useful summaries of previous research, plus fascinating new data based on diaries kept by 500 people over five years, equals a great resource. There isn't likely to be another study this big and detailed for a long time.

Brilliant, highly readable book showing the role of TV in the lives of ordinary people, i.e. everybody. Very well-written, and the summaries of previous research make it great for the undergraduate student. The quotes from all the viewers, 500 of them, make it a very easy and enjoyable read. I liked the pages about battles for control of the TV in the family, and about gender. The chapter on news got a bit boring. Overall though this is essential for media studies people, I would have thought.

I bought this book as I had read another book from the same author. At
last she was back! However I also was rather preoccupied. Her first book
had acquired almost iconic status amongst prenatal psychologists.
Prenatal psychology seems to have developed into a hazy field full of
fancy leaps, unverified facts and with a mystical aura added to it. I was
thrilled to know that, contrary to many of her colleagues, the author had
had the courage to start almost from scratch and fully immerse herself
into first-hand work. I found the initial chapters demystifying fancy
views on fetal life absolutely fantastic. True science at its best!
However also the rest of the book is fascinating. In showing how genes
and environment constantly interact, it teaches us a lot about early
human development in general. Photography adds conviction to most points
all along. In addition I found the massive bibliography extremely
helpful. I would strongly recommend this book to parents and

professionals alike. I hope this author will soon produce another book!

This book deals with the development of twins from before birth. I consider this to be a revolutionary book as it takes into account all factors that contribute to the devolpment of twins. Too often have this facotrs been ignored. Although the book is clearly written by an outstanding scholar, the style could appeal to a very wide audience, from partents to physicians. A true must for anyone interested in the field of child devolpment.

This book is gr8!! I like the St Clares better then Malory Towers. I reeeeeeally like the way Enid Blyton wrote.... but don't read 3rd and 6th coz Pamela Cox wrote those and she she sucks at carring on Blyton's characters. SHe's got Charlotta all WRONG!!! But I do like Rachel in the 3rd, she was a good character. And the twins in the 1st form in the 6th book are good but their excuse for pretending that 1 of the twins was ill at home and they pretended to both be the 1 twin was RUBISH!!! I mean saying that they just thought it would be fun or somethink was UTTER AND COMPLETE RUBBISH (just don't read them it will save urself the misery)!!!!!
This book is really gr8 and is good way to start off the seires. It gives u a clear veiw of what the school is all about and the books to follow. If u like St Clare's then do read Malory Towers, it is just like this but not with twins. It's basically a copy of St Clare's or St Clare's is a copy. If u have already 1 other book and wasn't keen maybe have a look at it in a charity shop and then decide later.
I find it really odd that Byton didn't like kids when she wrote such gr8 1s.I would advise u to buy this book.

This book is tops, and i cannot believe that i am the first person to review it! iam particularly attached to Janet, as i luv to play practical jokes! The twins acted like right pigs in the first part, but they soon became nice, thankfully.

It is very interesting to read about the invention that allowed the game of basketball to celebrate the slam dunk as it does. I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of the modern game.

This is a excellent book on the history of the break away
basket and how it saved the excitement of the Slam-Dunk that
makes a basketball game so enjoyable.
It also shows the steps needed in getting a patent and how
it is so hard to do.

It has become almost a commonplace to note that though we live longer and healthier lives, we are also more concerned about our health than ever before. Whilst many commentators have written on different aspects of this paradox , there has until now been no satisfactory survey of the whole. Fitzpatrick gives us, from his perspective as a GP, the most penetrating analysis yet published of the rise of the New Public Health, and of its dangers for patients, doctors and the relationship between them.

Fitzpatrick presents a history of the way that health has become a major personal and political topic, by looking at the different health scares of the last few years, the screening tests and 'healthy living' recommendations that have been introduced and accepted in spite of dissenting academic criticism We are all familiar with instructions to eat healthily (just why is it five or six portions of fruit or vegetables per day anyway?), drink a certain number of units of alcohol a week, take exercise, and subject ourselves to screening tests of dubious efficacy . However, it is only when we are confronted by the whole panoply of measures that we realise how far things have gone and how rapid the pace of change has been. The result is that we now tolerate, if not actively seek out, a level of interference in our personal lives which would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.

How to explain the astonishing success of the new public health amongst doctors and the public? A cynic would say that there is a straightforward financial motive for many doctors' enthusiasm for these measures, and though there is some truth in this, it is not the most important part of the story. Fitzpatrick provides an excellent account of the gradual process by which the medical profession has lost confidence in itself, as the old arrogance has been replaced by acute self doubt. The crisis of modern medicine is graphically illustrated by the volte face of the BMA in its attitude to alternative medicine: from a defiant defence of the 'demonstrable and reproducible benefits' of orthodox medicine in 1986 to a posture of 'abject relativism' in response to 'complementary ' approaches only seven years later .

Fitzpatrick also considers why health has become such a public concern over the last decade or so. This section is short and thus appears

somewhat schematic but does provide the basis for further work. Many commentators have noted that the ending of the Cold War has thrown up massive problems for the old ideologues of the West, as the initial triumphalism rapidly evaporated to be replaced by a general feeling of stagnation. Fitzpatrick notes that '[c]hanges in society now appear no longer to be the result of conscious or planned human activity , indeed things appear to be out of control'. At first sight this may seem exaggerated, but then think of the almost mediaeval suspicion with which GM food has been greeted. In these circumstances, any hope of achieving progress in society is just not on the agenda , and the retreat to narrow concerns about health is understandable. It is also understandable that the government should take advantage of concerns about health to strengthen its grip over an increasingly fragmented society The result , as Fitzpatrick puts it, is that 'when health becomes the goal of human endeavour it acquires an oppressive influence over the life of the individual'.

In the short term, the trends identified in The Tyranny of Health are likely to get worse . Only last week a distinguished cancer specialist was advocating that men over 50 (a category in which I have recently acquired a vested interest) should abstain from sexual intercourse and thus cut their risk of cancer of the prostate . Indeed the prostate looks set to become the organ of the decade, although I fear that until we have acquired our own distinctive ribbon we cannot compete with the other cancers.

How then to reverse the tyranny of health ? Fitzpatrick recognises that this book is very much a preliminary work , but it does lay the basis for future work which should be aimed at defining the links between, on the one hand, the tyranny of health and the crisis of medicine, and on the other, the stasis of the new world order. The medicalisation of life and the politicisation of medicine should both be resisted, for as he puts it '[i]n the absence of a forceful movement from below, medical intervention becomes a vehicle of government policy, not politics writ large, but politics on a small scale, petty, intrusive and moralising'. Fitzpatrick is certainly not against the idea of doctors being involved in the politics of health , but he emphasises the importance of maintaining clear boundaries. Doctors should reassert their autonomy from the state and '[d]octors who aspire to a wider political role, would be best advised to pursue this, not in their surgery, but in the public sphere. At a time when health has become such a political issue, he insists that 'the first responsibility of a doctor as a doctor is to provide medical treatment for individual patients'.

On first inspection, this book appears similar to Petr Skrabanek's The Death of Humane Medicine (1994). But Skrabanek's' critique, though often perceptive, was that of a cynical, detached libertarian,. Mocking his gullible medical colleagues and expressing a certain contempt for the general public, his approach was ultimately sterile. In contrast, Fitzpatrick's is a much more serious work. It is a major contribution to our ideas of health and disease at the begining of the 21st century, which deserves to be considered alongside contributions by writers such as Susan Sontag and John Berger .

In the preface to this remarkable book Dr. Fitzpatrick describes breaking into the house of an elderly couple during a bitterly cold February. The couple had succumbed to a combination of infection and hypothermia. While waiting for the ambulance, Fitzpatrick, a primary care physician working in a blue collar Borough of London, England, found an untouched leaflet describing the dangers of anonymous sex and the virtues of condoms. This leaflet had been distributed to 23 million homes in the UK, around half of which contained either an elderly couple or an old person living alone. At this moment Fitzpatrick reflected upon the absurdity of the "everyone is at risk" campaign and the motives of a government that did little to prevent the elderly from freezing to death and yet enthusiastically supported "healthy living".

The conclusion that Fitzpatrick reaches will surprise and enrage both those who agree and disagree with his view. The author is nothing if not blunt stating, "the governments health policy is really a programme of social control packaged as health promotion." In an era when social institutions are increasingly discredited (think Congress, the Senate or any other political institution), irrelevant (e.g., unions) or ignored (e.g., religious proscriptions against premarital sex) the government has seized upon personal health as a means of reconnecting with society and regulating and supervising people's lives.

At first glance Fitzpatrick's contention might be viewed as absurd and eccentric but think about it, how many aspects of your life are affected by concerns about health? Do you feel guilty driving to work when you might walk? Do you eat salad when you would prefer a steak? Do you miss out on a Friday night excursion so as to not have a drink or to avoid a smoky atmosphere? Medical jurisdiction over lifestyle extends into the home, the workplace, our schools and neighborhoods. This might not appear coercive but combined with endless screening programs of increasingly intrusive nature and daily announcements regarding another necessary alteration to keep us healthy and the insidious regulation of life becomes more apparent.

This might all be forgivable if it were the case that these changes in lifestyle were of benefit but Fitzpatrick explains they are not. With the exception of smoking there is very little evidence that the proposed adoption of a "healthy lifestyle" will have any noticeable benefit to the individual. For example, changes in diet to reduce cholesterol will increase the life expectancy of an average 65-year-old man by between 2.5 and 5.0 months. If you are younger than this, the benefits are so small as to be incalculable. Essentially your odds of having a heart attack under the age of 65 are very small; if you start a diet of muesli and skimmed milk while avoiding all fatty food your risk will be reduced to very, very small. When stated like this many might choose to live happily, if a little more riskily, eating bacon and drinking whole milk rather than existing "safely" on a boring diet.

Fitzpatrick's bottom line is that people need less moralizing when they are well and more health care when they are ill. Doctors should retreat from the moral sphere and return to helping people live their lives, as long and as healthily as possible, with their vices that make life happy and livable.

I'm a imaging doctor. But i don't find out so many book about ultrasound. So I very wish to read it.

I'm a imaging doctor. But i don't find out so many book about ultrasound. So I very wish to read it.

This book is really helpful if you want to use common assessments to look at student work and uncover student's initial ideas about science concepts.

I highly recommend this book! I am in the process of writing a grant proposal to get a copy of this book as well as the second edition for each of the science teachers at our school. I haven't seen the book, but I have used the assessment probes as part of a Montana State University mentoring program. The assessment probes are MAGIC. I used them in classes ranging from Physical Science (which is taken primarily by students who are not college-bound)to Honors Physics, and the students got so much out of the exercise. One young woman, who was a marginal student before the probe "What is Matter?", "won" a discussion with the smartest boy in the class about whether air is matter, and her performance took off after that! I highly recommend this book.

I like this book too, especially since I am a book collector. A nicely written adventure about the old book world. I agree that the last chapter is a classic.

I got myself a copy of Under Cover after reading the author's book on map collecting, which I found very well written. Under Cover is a very weird book about horrible crimes and events set in the world of rare books and maps. The settings are very accurate and the author knows the world of books and maps very well and as a collector I respond to this book. I think many of the crimes are reported tongue in cheek, but somehow I can't quite tell if any are real or have a real basis. This book should get a cult following. The last chapter is a classic! If you like unusual books and like old books in general this is a fun read.

Dr. Fred Newsome is the head of a group practice in New Coventry, Connecticut. The group is debating whether to work with big insurance companies that would make everyone of them extremely wealthy. Fred opposes this idea while his friend and partner Dermott Spencer fully supports the concept. Fred is flying his plane to see a crony, who went through a similar experience. However, his plane crashes, leaving him dead.

A couple of years later, Dermott is in charge of the group, which is now affiliated with Lovejoy Hospital, a place whose vision is to have the world's most cost efficent health program without regard to the medical need or care required. Mike Richmond, an ethical resident, wants to join Spencer's group. He wins the approval of Dermott when he covers the man's bungling during surgery. Mike is quickly accepted into the practice, but soon realizes that he has joined a malignant entity capable of doing any evil necessary to survive. When Mike begins to ask questions, he finds that if he fails to shut up immediately he will lose more than what he recently gained. He could lose his life.

Frances Roe, known for her exciting thrillers, delivers a frightening glimpse into what is a very possible future state of health care. The chilling aspects of UNDER THE KNIFE lies in the basis of reality that money is the only determinant in health care decisions. Ms. Roe shows the ethical dilemmas confronting doctors by using her protagonist as a symbol of a practitioner trying to stay on the right road. Readers of medical thrillers and conspiracy theorists will want to read this medical equivalent to THE FIRM.

Harriet Klausner

Working in the medical field, I was especially enthralled with what a brilliant, diabolical story this was. The characters were sympathetic and warm, and the story didn't slow down for a minute. I've always enjoyed Frances Roe's books, but this was his best yet. If you like medical thrillers, or just thrillers in general, this is the book for you.