Scientific American Medicine

Abstract

This two-volume loose-leafed compendium of internal medicine and its subspecialties is advertised as a medical education system and not simply a textbook. The "system" is that each month the owner-subscriber receives a new index and about 200 substitute pages, containing updates in certain specific areas and reprinting of the section incorporating the new material. These rewritten sections are accompanied by a flyer that lists the new facts and where in the text they will be found. As an educational system, the hope is that the subscriber read or reread the revised chapters in their entirety and not just the specific new facts. During the course of about two years, the reader who covered his regular monthly 200 pages would find that he had relatively painlessly read a current textbook of medicine. This system is possible only because of modern computerized printing and a pagination system that allows easy replacement of