Jonathan A. Edlow

The summary of this book really put too much emphasis on how "thrilling" it would be. While a decent read, the stories do drag on a little and I found myself getting bored a lot. It ended up being less mystery and more medical history than I thought it would be. Edlow seems to talk just for the sake of talking at times. He explains things that I don't really see as relevant or important, leaving me lost and waiting to get to the point.

Overall it was well-written, I'll give it that, but it just wasn't as good as I expected. I'd recommend this to folks who are more interested in the particulars of unusual diseases and parasites, or just medical cases in general. Just be ready for a lot of background and not much focus on the cases themselves.… (mehr)

I read this because I like the TV show House, and the general idea of a book about diagnostic medicine in the context of unusual symptoms. I enjoyed reading this book, and learned a little (no more apple cider at little Christmas tree farms for me, unless I ask about how they wash their apples!), but the material was fairly dated. In other words, most of the detective stories are set in the 70s or 80s, and would nowadays be solved much more easily because of MRIs and CT scans and the like. In other words, this wasn't quite as modern as I expected it to be.… (mehr)