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Socrates: Were we not saying that there are agents many and infinite and patients many and infinite?
Plato
Theaetetus
I don't know when I have read a more enjoyable text. Bedside Cardiology is a stunning demonstration of the instructive power of the Socratic method as applied by a sensible and perceptive clinician who knows his physiology and anatomy. Having begun this question-and-answer book with caution (because of the method), I closed it with enthusiasm (because of this application of the method). Organizing questions in logical sequence could have been a pitfall, but Constant has raised all the right ones. Taken with their answers, he might have produced a correct, but staccato, catechism, yet the result is a flow of clinical cardiology which manages to be pithy, incisive, factladen—and smooth. Even the knowledgeable reader is carried onward by this book's clarity and force; I found it hard to put down.
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