This book is written by 3 experienced veterinary pathologists, 2 from the United States, and 1 from Canada (Ted Clark, familiar to WCVM and University of Calgary students). The impetus for putting together this book, as stated in the preface, is the sad fact that bovine pathology no longer holds a top spot at teaching institutions. The authors, therefore, want to share some of their photographs with future pathologists and practitioners so they are not lost to the archives. This is a valiant idea, and I think they have achieved their goal by producing a comprehensive and accessible book.
The book is organized into 17 chapters, 14 of major organ systems, and 3 specialty: Diseases of Neonates and Calves, Poisonous Plant-Induced Diseases, and Diseases without Lesions. The first page of each chapter is then broken down into headings and sub-headings, and sub-sub headings. Although this is very organized, there are no page numbers to correlate with the headings, so one has to leaf through the pages if looking for a specific subject, or go to the index. The book, however, includes an eBook by Vitalsource Bookshelf which can be downloaded onto a mobile device where it works very nicely. It is much easier to pull up specific sections from the chapter headings this way than in the hard copy, and it’s handy to have to look on one’s phone for field PMs.
Each subject (disease) has an introduction outlining the basic disease process and causative agent, and at least 1, and sometimes 2 or more, photographs of gross lesions, invariably accompanied by a histology slide(s) of the specimen. All photographs have a detailed but succinct explanation, often with references to other chapters where the disease may be featured affecting a different organ system. It is impressive that photos are presented for most diseases mentioned, be they of the animal, the postmortem findings, or the microscopic lesions. The poisonous plant chapter is very thorough and has photographs of plants and pathology, as well as a detailed text.
In most, but strangely not all, of the chapters the authors have provided the clinical signs and differential diagnoses of each disease, no doubt helpful to the practitioner using the book as a diagnostic aid. The descriptive text is thorough and most photographs clear. There are also “Fact Sheets” in several chapters covering important diseases (for example: BVD, abortions, certain lung diseases, among others) in which a quick summary can be found.
I found this book to be organized, thorough, visually appealing, and interesting. In it, there are things one sees every day and things one has rarely or never seen. From a Canadian perspective it is quite relevant, with a slight emphasis on feedlot and a western hemisphere bias. This book will definitely be useful to pathologists, students (who can still remember their histology), and bovine practitioners (who probably can’t), and might even provide some incentive to do more postmortems in the field to find some of these interesting lesions.