It would appear that cost was a primary consideration in creating this text. The book is a small and simple handbook (no photographs or illustrations) that provides a point-form review of pig diseases. The book is divided into 10 chapters. Chapter 1 touches on the veterinarian's role, namely, the concept of biosecurity and minimal disease, and discusses vaccine and drug use; it is directed to an American readership, so some of this material relative to drug use reviews American rules and regulations and is not directly relevant to Canadian veterinarians. The following 2 chapters consist of pointform summaries of diseases grouped according to body systems, with chapter 2 devoted to polysystemic diseases. The final chapter lists diseases caused by toxic agents and is the largest chapter in the book. Toxicity problems tend to be rare in modern confinement pig farming, and so it is surprising that they receive this much attention from the authors.
Diseases are presented with the usual headings of etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical signs, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and control. Typical of this type of handbook, each disease receives about equal space. The drawback to this approach is that the reader may find it difficult to determine which diseases are important and which are either very rare or nonsignificant.
The authors have done a thorough job and have included several recent diseases not listed in their 1st edition, including postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome. There are a few relatively common diseases that are not covered, possibly because the authors considered them to be not very important. Under integumentary diseases, for example, pityriasis rosae and ringworm are not mentioned, but swine pox is.
This text would have been more useful as a study guide or veterinary manual had the authors included tables or charts. The differential diagnosis of swine diseases is generally aided by knowing the age or production group affected, the pattern of spread, and other key points of history or clinical signs. A chart showing how the various diseases could be differentiated on this basis also would have helped pull the information together. Streptococcal meningitis, for example, is listed under polysystemic diseases and not neurological diseases. I think someone using this book as a quick reference might miss a likely rule-out, such as streptococcal meningitis by scanning the chapter relating to the body system.
The authors do not reference their work but they do provide a list of suggested readings after some of the disease entries. The information provided in the book is accurate and up-to-date, but is not extensive. The scope of the book is similar to other disease guides currently available, including: Pig Diseases by David Taylor (Burlington Press), Swine Disease Manual by C.E. Whiteman and R.D. Glock (University of Colorado), and A Pocket Guide to Recognizing and Treating Pig Diseases by M.R. Muirhead and T.J.L. Alexander (5M Enterprises Inc.).
Cowart and Casteel do not attempt to deal with the complexities of swine practice, such as the interaction of disease, management, and the environment, and do not discuss production records or economics. Therefore, veterinarians in swine practice are likely to be disappointed by the limited depth of the book, but for the mixed practitioner who rarely deals with pigs, this book may be a useful guide. The main readership is likely to be undergraduate veterinary students preparing for board examinations or anyone else wishing a quick review of pig diseases.