Tropical Medicine: A Clinical Text

A knowledge of clinical tropical medicine is essential for every modern physician. Diseases are no longer restricted to geographic boundaries, for the scope and speed of air travel has destroyed the barriers of time and space. The detection of illnesses in temperate climates is utterly dependent on an awareness of their very existence, and on understanding their pathogenesis, signs and symptoms. These fundamental facts are rarely taught in any depth in most Western medical schools, and the diseases considered in this book - the greatest cripplers and killers in the world - rate only passing attention in most academic curricula. We believe that learning tropical medicine should not consist of merely memorizing parasitological and microbiological details. A clinical discipline depends on observations, experience and judgement. Our approach is based on the realization that most medical students wish to become practitioners, and that most graduate physicians want the necessary basic information that will allow them to properly care for patients.