Diagnosis by the Book

Harried by hair loss? If you are a healthy male, there is really no cure for a balding pate, except a toupee or a hair transplant. Caught a cold? Forget about those nostrums plugged on TV, unless you want to toss your money away. Stymied by a sex problem? Your trouble is probably psychological, because the bedroom is only a microcosm of the outside world's stresses and strains.

These bits of blunt advice are not delivered by a kindly country doctor but by an unusual new medical guide for lay people. Unlike most other books in this proliferating genre, Symptoms: The Complete Home Medical Encyclopedia (Thomas Y. Crowell; $17.95) helps the medically untutored diagnose an illness as the professionals do: by its symptoms.

For someone seeking advice about what to do for an ache, for example, or who is secretly worried about occasional bowel bleeding or vague chest discomfort, the search through a standard handbook may produce more anxiety than the malady; the reader must hop from disease to disease until he finds one with symptoms that match his complaint. Symptoms adroitly solves that difficulty. It catalogues not only diseases but, in a separate section, their symptoms as well. Thus if the reader has, say, a swelling in his leg, he simply looks in the table of symptoms under the heading "Bones, Joints, Muscles and Extremities." There he finds a listing for swollen leg. It tells him that the problem may be, among other things, phlebitis, a painful swelling often characterized by whitened skin and a prominent vein.

Whisky for Pain. If the reader wants to know still more, he turns to the phlebitis entry in the diseases section of the book. There he learns that the disorder may be due to a clot in the outer veins of the thigh or leg; that his feet should be raised in bed; that whisky may ease the pain; and that doctors --whom he should consult posthaste--usually advise anticoagulants or surgery. In all, the book lists more than 650 symptoms and discusses nearly 500 diseases--from acne and cold sores to Zenker's diverticulum, an unnatural pouch that sometimes develops in the esophagus of elderly people.

Symptoms is the handiwork of 20 leading specialists in different areas of medicine. In spite of the collegial authorship, Editor Sigmund Stephen Miller has managed to maintain a refreshingly wry tone. For example, in discussing nutrition, he notes that "sad to say, more organic food is sold than grown." Stressing preventive medicine, which is frequently neglected, he condemns smoking, prescribes liquor only in moderation and cries fowl (as well as fish) to saturated-fat-laden beef.

While emphasizing the need to see a physician, given certain symptoms, the handbook also stresses that too much doctoring is as bad as too little: "If the disease is comparatively minor, and the symptoms are minor, it is better to try to get by without medication." Above all, it makes a strong pitch for physical fitness, endorsing everything from swimming to sex: "The body is far more likely to rust out than wear out; the more it is used the better it will function." The same might be said of Symptoms.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.