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This new edition of the Textbook of Clinical Pathology is an attempt to put together the most important and helpful insights into understanding disease, with the laboratory as the point of reference. It is deliberately designed to assist medical students and practicing physicians. What is and what is not included, to what extent the subject is probed, and to what degree the pathophysiologic basis for the test is explained vary widely with the interest and competence of the 20 contributors. This is not surprising; there is so much more knowledge that could have been included and there is so little agreement as to what clinical pathology really is.
The section entitled "Clinical Correlations—Organ Systems," for example, includes excellent chapters on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Yet the approaches are quite different: a listing of the "diseases" of the heart and vessels with some explanation of the biochemical or micro-biological basis,