An indispensable ophthalmological volume for any general practitioner’s office.
Hung (Silk Road on My Mind, 2015, etc.) offers an ophthalmology guide intended for use by nonspecialist medical practitioners.
Since his retirement, the author has volunteered in developing parts of the world, such as Samoa, where ophthalmologists and other medical specialists are in short supply. His new book is a concise reference manual that’s meant to guide general practitioners through the basics of eye care. He details the necessary equipment (such as a hand flashlight and a Snellen visual acuity chart), tells how to give eye exams, gives an overview of eye anatomy with diagrams and a glossary, and shows how to identify and potentially treat various ailments, including cataracts, glaucoma, and conjunctivitis. Hung makes specific recommendations of antibacterial and other helpful solutions, as well as their estimated cost in developing nations (“A bottle of drops or a tube of ointment of 10% sulfacetamide costs less than a dollar...and is freely available without prescription”). The book also includes numerous, important black-and-white photos and diagrams, including visual acuity charts approved by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, although the author does ask users to refer to color versions online whenever possible. The language throughout Hung’s guide is clear, as in these directions to follow during an eye exam: “Rest your hand on the patient’s forehead and use your thumb to hold his or her lid open.” But the faster that practitioners memorize eye-anatomy terms, the faster they will absorb the book’s contents; for example, the fundus—or the rear of the eye, visible through an ophthalmoscope—is mentioned quickly on Page 2, prior to a diagram of the eye’s complete biology on Page 27. The glossary is perfectly concise, and whenever the text discusses illnesses in detail, the names of the ailments are bolded. Hung acknowledges that ophthalmology is an expanding field because more people are living longer; he also importantly notes that if children in developing nations allow problems such as strabismus—which points an eye inward or outward from the nose—to go untreated, they may grow up unable to marry or work. More specialists should create guides of this caliber for nonspecialists.
An indispensable ophthalmological volume for any general practitioner’s office.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-74860-2
Page Count: 166
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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