Living Medicine: Planning a Career, Choosing a Specialty

Most of the book is dedicated to describing the complex interpretation of images at the level of the cortex. A summary of the encoding of objects in their shapes, color, movement, and depth is provided in an enjoyable chapter which explains some of the rationale behind optical illusions. This material is followed by a detailed analysis of neural velocity field computation, recognition of facial expression, motion processing, and the coordination of eye movement. An interesting discussion of the use of positron emission tomography to help map visual cortex functioning is also included. For the neurology student, this book can be an amusing and up-to-date summary of visual processing systems. For the clinician, it also sheds light on the visual disturbances associated with such conditions as Parkinson's disease, Altzheimer's disease, and multiple sclerosis. For the vision researcher, it serves as a convenient collection of some of the field's pioneering work. In any case, it comes with a hefty price tag. Most medical students will read anything they can find on the subject of choosing a specialty. Nonetheless, as Living Medicine: Planning a Career, Choosing a Specialty is written by the dean of a London medical school and much of the material is British-system-specific, American medical students are likely to get frustrated and put the book down as quickly as they picked it up. With a little time, an open mind, and, perhaps, a sincere interest in the British medical system, even American medical students can benefit from reading Living Medicine. Not only will they gain a feeling of what things are like for their peers across the Atlantic, but reading about another country's medical system might help them to see their own system more clearly and give them a better idea of what they expect from it. The book is very well written and covers all aspects of a career in medicine, including ethics, descriptions of the various specialties, opportunities in research and public health, and the stresses one is likely to encounter during training. For a book with the words "choosing a specialty" in the title, though, the descriptions of the specialties seemed rather brief. As soon as the reader begins to get an idea as to whether he or she is suited for a certain specialty or not, the author moves on to describe the next one. The volume is also chock-full of historical vignettes and interesting quotations. These, …