Although the target audience is not specifically indicated, this is a textbook aimed at medical practitioners and medical students. It will also be of some interest to medical technologists, marginal interest to biologists who want a clinical perspective on their parasitological studies, and of little interest to veterinary parasitologists.
After a brief introduction to eukaryotic parasites, the clinically important parasites of humans are described, species by species, under the headings of ‘Protozoa’, ‘Nematodes’, ‘Cestodes’ and ‘Trematodes’. Following a brief consideration of medically important arthropods, there are essays on medical ecology, travel medicine and the mode of action of antiparasitic drugs.
Sixty-eight species are listed in the Table of Contents, though many more are included incidentally. Under each specific heading are a brief, informative introduction, a well-informed historical review, an outline of the relevant life-cycle, and sections on pathogenesis, clinical disease, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention and control with, finally, a useful, if americocentric, bibliography. There is an extensive collection of relevant illustrations, not invariably well reproduced in the new edition; there are numerous informative life-history diagrams, which sometimes include non-human hosts. Unfortunately the latter are not named, and are barely mentioned in the main text.
As the authors point out, it is hardly possible for a single person to master all the information necessary for a book like this. This is all the more true for a single reviewer, so this review concentrates on those parts that will be of interest to readers of Parasitology, of which I have personal experience.
Earlier editions were 1982, 1989, 1995, 2000. Superficially, the fifth edition closely resembles the fourth: the table of contents is almost unchanged, but the section on the mode of action of antiparasitic drugs is doubled in size, and the new edition is on poorer quality paper.
Useful addenda contain a comprehensive account of antiparasitic treatment, and a list of drug manufacturers. A similar list of commercially available immunological and biochemical diagnostic tests might also be valuable. The section on medical ecology of parasitic diseases is little more than a collection of anecdotal musings. It does refer to a useful web site (not, however, listed in the ‘websites of interest’ (p. 361). I particularly enjoyed the rapidly-becoming-outdated statement: “Western medicine adheres to the tenant (sic) that we should live our lives without [parasites]” (p. 289).
To present the material in a compromise sequence, between a proper zoological classification and a clinical sequence or series of syndromes, organ by organ is understandable. But to ride roughshod over numerous conventions of zoological terminology is not. For example, the abbreviations of ‘species’: ‘sp.’ (singular) and ‘spp.’ (plural) are used indiscriminately; diacritical marks, outlawed by the ICZN, are still used for Iodamoeba bütschlii (sic;=Iodamoeba buetschlii) but, thankfully, not for Strongyloides fuelleborni; citations of authors are given (unnecessarily) for headline species names, invariably in parentheses, even when this is incorrect. Generic names are freely vernacularized, and are indiscriminately capitalized or not, and italicized or not. Many clinicians, like molecular biologists and other biochemists, may see little relevance in such supposedly trivial quibbles, but any real zoologist will be seriously affronted.
A few other points that a copy-editor might have picked up include: Cyclospora cayatenensis (p. viii); dracunculiasis (p. ix), but: dracunculosis (p. viii); I was delighted to see that the charming phenomena of sporogany (p. 52) and schizozony (p. 53), whatever they might be, remain unaltered from the fourth edition.
The entries on Strongyloides stercoralis indicate that the authors are no less confused than most people on the life-history details: Second instar larvae are supposedly passed in the stools, then there are four moults (so five larval instars), before free-living adults develop; it is implied that, under ideal conditions, free-living reproduction may continue indefinitely; the assumption is perpetuated that the lungs are part of the normal migratory pathway, rather than a blind alley as suggested (for S. ratti at least), by Wilson and more recent authors.
Under S. fuelleborni, our belief that transmission to infants must be transmammary is based on much more than ‘speculation’ (p. 132).
Many, especially those involved in the recent correspondence about false reports from Antigua, will be surprised to learn that diagnosis of all forms of cutaneous leishmaniasis due to Leishmania (sic) depends on PCR (p. 21); the argument in favour of the continued use of L. infantum chagasi is long out-dated; the ‘prevention and control’ of leishmaniasis, by ‘eradication of sand fly breeding sites near urban and suburban centres’ might be fine:- if only we had any real idea where to find them!
I suppose the fact that this title has reached its fifth edition indicates that many people like it, and that it is, at least, commercial. Personally, I would strongly urge the authors to seek the advice of a pedantic zoologist/parasitologist before embarking on a next edition, and would urge students to try to find a copy of Beaver Yung and Cupp, Belding, a recent edition of Manson or, best of all, splash out on the latest edition of Topley and Wilson.
