Jayashri Srinivasan, Claudia Chaves, Brian Scott and Juan Small

Published by Elsevier (May 2019)

ISBN 978-0-323-55476-3

Price £74.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/netters-neurology-9780323554763.html

As a medical student, I became enthralled by the skill and artistry of Frank Netter’s superb medical images and they helped me a lot. Now in later years, his drawings have been upgraded and the image bank enhanced by modern additions and new books carrying his name (he died in 1991) have appeared. One of them is this new edition of Netter’s neurology.

As would be expected, the book is full of outstanding images which help to help amplify the excellent and abundant text. Being a neurology book of course there are scan images as well. However it is the excellent use of figures as learning points where this book really scores well. The quality of the images is excellent as is their reproduction and their educational value is also superb as well. Of course medicine does not stand still and the images have either been updated or new ones added by the next generation of artists.

These images clearly amplify the text and make it easier for the learner. Not only does it make it easier but it makes it a pleasure to learn from this book.  The production values are excellent with the images naturally very clear, beautifully produced and adds significantly to explaining and amplifying the text. The book has a nice coffee table feel to it and the hard back edition amply protects the paper. Incidentally the paper is glossy high quality and again enhances the view that is a well-produced book. Don’t think about this book as an illustrated atlas, it is that and substantially more. Think about it as an excellent and up to date medical text book whose illustrations and images are amply scattered throughout the book and in effect this helps to “pump up” the text.

The text is excellent, well written and good enough to be for many people, the only neurology textbook they need unless you are a specialist neurologist. Even then neurologists will appreciate the fresh approach to learning and it being an up to date really good textbook. I enjoyed going through it and marvelling at the images and learning from the text. This book hits the sweet spot of a good volume of text and often quite in depth coupled with a great collection of images making it an educational success. Even better it is up to date and unusually for a textbook, it is a pleasure to open up and read random sections and learn for the fun of it.

The book also comes with an on line and app version (the latter requires an 800MB download) which is part of the publisher’s Expert Consult product. It is easy to use and a great bonus of having portability of this book.

This book is not cheap but is a great product and for those who will use it on a regular basis, they will come to really appreciate it.

 

Dr Harry Brown

July 2019