Merriam-Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary, 2005 Revised Edition is an invaluable resource for health care professionals with over 59,000 entries covering today's most widely used health care terms, abbreviations, medication names, and biographies of medical pioneers. Unlike unwieldy medical encyclopedias, Merriam-Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary, 2005 Revised Edition is compact, portable, and affordable, making it perfect for everyone from allied health students and medical professionals to consumers without a medical background who want a desktop reference without investing a lot of money.
The rapidly changing nature of medical research justifies regular revisions of medical dictionaries and several excellent volumes have been published in the last few years. Of the recent releases, this dictionary may have the most comprehensive range of terminology. Besides the usual definitions of diseases and medical tests, this edition includes terms from genetics (junk DNA, retrotransposon) and sports medicine (Tommy John surgery) as well as popular terminology (sick headache, morning breath) and dietary supplements (SAMe). Definitions are current (SARS) but quite brief. One of Merriam Webster's strengths is the inclusion of eponyms; however, this dictionary does not provide illustrations and has minimal supplemental information. The previous edition of Merriam Webster's medical dictionary is available electronically at no cost through medlineplus and is scheduled for update later this year. Many of these definitions remain the same, and their brevity makes the online version a useful alternative. Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary , though expensive, has more thorough definitions and includes extensive color illustrations as well as lengthy appendixes. Tabor's also includes eponyms but in less detail than Merriam Webster. Like Merriam Webster, the 2004 edition of American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary has brief definitions but does include a few more supplemental features. Black's Medical Dictionary released its latest version in the United States in 2004, but that edition was actually published in Britain in 2002 making it less current than the other recent releases. Bottom Line When faced with these excellent choices, academic and health libraries will be more satisfied with the 2005 edition of Tabor's, but smaller public libraries may find Merriam Webster's reasonable cost and breadth of coverage useful.--Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida Lib., St. Petersburg
[Page 180]. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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