Teaching art and science of clinical medicine

Art of Clinical Medicine (210 edition)

Author : Dr S D K Perera

Samayawardhana Bookshop, Colombo

It is the duty of teachers of medicine to impart to students their experience in the practice of the art and science of clinical medicine. This is particularly important in an age where clinical medicine is threatened with extinction.

Computerized laboratory investigations and sophisticated procedures are being widely used to make a diagnosis without a careful clinical examination. It is much more satisfying to the clinician to make a diagnosis of a lung abscess or hypothyroidism on clinical history and examination and confirm this by appropriate investigatory procedures, rather than through the reverse.

Dr Perera has made a determined effort to give the details of eliciting the history and physical signs and their interpretation, with illustrations and useful differential diagnoses. This book should prove to be useful aid to student who are now studying medicine and to those who wish to re-learn the art and science of clinical medicine.

He concludes by listing the complete investigatory procedures that need to be done in different clinical disorders.

A medical student who has the ambition to pursue clinical medicine to its logical conclusion must remember word-by-word Dr Perera accurate instructions.

Judged from the little knowledge I possess of the vagaries of body and mind Dr S D K Perera’s erudite exposition on clinical medicine merits commendation, as it is a valuable contribution to the undergraduates, postgraduates and also to the foreign graduates who are preparing for the ERPM examination. This book provides a CD which includes coloured photographs.

- Prof U S Jayawickrama