الأمراض الجلدية – أساسيات طب الجلد / DERMATOLOGY – The Essentials of Cutaneous Medicine

In spite of otherwise great excellence, works on dermatology usually ignore the teaching needs of beginners.

Cutaneous medicine is so confusing that, unless its study is gradually led up to, it appears chaotic. Indeed, frankness compels the admission that it is never quite simple, even to an accredited expert.

Another reference book would have no justification. But this volume aims to present essentials succinctly, consecutively, completely, and simply, without sacrificing important detail. 

Thus, in spirit, it is dedicated to the novice and to the general practitioner, too busy to grapple with technicalities and abstractions. 

This group of readers should not be burdened with literary citations that cannot possibly interest them; nor with histological descriptions which, unless exhaustive and technical, are valueless, and in any case incomprehensible except to pathologists; nor with elaborate historical sketches that are mainly exhibitions of pedantry.

Accordingly, a matter of this sort, unless of particular practical importance has been omitted since it would add to bulk rather than strength.

nothing germane has been sacrificed- What remains represents the author’s conception of the minimum requirements for an adequate outline of the subject- Less important diseases appear in finer type, not to create an impression that they may be slurred, but to convey graphically their relative place among dermatoses- And to the practitioner also this arrangement will be welcome, for he will find the kernel without himself having to do the husking. 

Numerous tables have been compiled classifying diseases, their etiology, and their relationship, always with the combined idea of constructiveness and analysis. 

There is no excess of illustrations, but the pictures have been selected purely for their didactic value, and the points they purpose to clarify are categorically enumerated. 

Thus, although in number they do not compare with what is found in many other books, if properly used, they will prove adequate to the requirements of readers seeking a clear-cut impression of the groundwork of dermatolog}’. 

There are about four hundred more or less distinctly established skin conditions, and the beginner or general practitioner is probably not intimately concerned with more than one-quarter of them.

It is the smaller fraction that is accompanied by pictures, although the rest are fully discussed in the text.