Books about medicine for the lay public have a long history. In the 18th century, the staple of many middle-class households, with a hallowed place next to the family bible, was Domestic Medicine: Or, a Treatise of the Prevention and Cure of Diseases By Regimen and Simple Medicines; while 1930s housewives relied on The Family Physician: A Modern and Up-to-Date Work on Domestic Ailments.
More recently, there's no doubt that the internet has vastly broadened our knowledge of health. But there's something about a trusted book that is both comforting and convenient. For one thing, all the information is in one place. And you don't have to deal with IT problems while your child is screaming to high heaven, or wonder which of the millions of sites listed when you Google the word "rash" you should trust.
Of course, as medicine moves on, print publications can become out of date quickly and sometimes dangerously, so it is important to make sure you have a recent edition. But good print sources of medical information still have a place in most homes. Here's our pick of the latest offerings.
The Complete Family Health Guide
(Dorling Kindersley, £35)
A weighty, lavishly illustrated tome of nearly 1,000 pages from the British
Medical Association (BMA). Sections include genetics, common diagnostic tests, treatments (including surgery, drugs, psychological and complementary therapies as well as care for the terminally ill), plus details of useful organisations and self-help groups. A key feature are the 60-odd flow charts which, with detailed questions about symptoms, can help you assess the likely cause and decide whether you need medical help. The language is plain, the tone sympathetic and straightforward; the only reservation being that it is so all-encompassing as to be a bit daunting. There's also the BMA's considerably slimmer Family Doctor Home Adviser (£14.99), a quick reference guide to symptoms and how to analyse them, with more of those symptom flow charts.
The Merck Manual of Medical Information - Home Edition (Pocket Books, £14.99)
Merck is the US drug company that publishes what was originally known as the Merck Manual of the Materia Medica - a classic text for physicians, which has now been translated into (relatively) plain language for the general public, and claims to cover every known medical problem. The pharma industry isn't a source one would normally associate with independent information for patients, but this is a trustworthy and comprehensive volume. With dense text and pages so thin they rustle, this is not a publication one might immediately grab while nursing a feverish child in the middle of the night, but it's a respectable home reference, in its way. Bear in mind that it's published primarily for the US market, so has US spelling, and US figures on incidence. There's a fascinating section on understanding medical terminology (did you know that the prefix procto means anus?).
Dr Miriam Stoppard's Family Health Guide (Dorling Kindersley, £22.50)
From the medical writer and broadcaster, this is a straightforward, practical home reference, with the emphasis on how to maintain good health at all ages. There's a particularly useful questionnaire to find out if an elderly relative has Alzheimer's. There's also a quick reference guide to symptoms, and 16 chapters devoted to body systems. It is, however, more lifestyle oriented than most health handbooks, arguably at the expense of hard medical facts: for example, the section on abortion has little on what happens during the procedure - but useful advice on how to take care of yourself afterwards.
Dr Dawn's Health Check: Everything Your Family Doctor Doesn't Have Time to Tell You (Mitchell Beasley, £14.99
You may feel chary, as I do, of celebrity doctors, but Dr Dawn Harper is a practising GP who specialises in women's and family health and who has done quite a creditable job here. Although not comprehensive, this is a succinct and well-illustrated guide, with a practical approach to hundreds of conditions. I particularly liked the fact that she doesn't ignore common anxieties, such as worries about putting on weight if you give up smoking. The numerous "myth buster" boxes ("I am fat because I have a slow metabolism/it's in my genes/it's due to my glands") are also interesting.
The Family Guide to Complementary and Conventional Medicine (Dorling Kindersley, £16.99)
If you sit on the fence when it comes to alternative and conventional medicine, this may be the book for you. Written by a qualified doctor, the guide looks at 101
conditions that, it says, "benefit from an integrated approach". It must be one of the few publications to list for each disorder both alternative and orthodox treatments on the same pages: thus the remedies for repetitive strain injury include painkillers, nutritional therapy, homeopathic salts, ergonomics, Alexander technique, yoga and stress management.
There is sensible and necessary advice about when to see a doctor for treatment, and when to consult with a doctor before trying herbal medicines. We can't vouch for the science behind some of these treatments, though.
Further reading for the really keen ...
First aid and home remedies
Pocket First Aid (Dorling Kindersley, £5.99), from the British Red Cross and St John's Ambulance, has user-friendly step by step advice on how to deal with 70 common medical conditions and injuries and is a handy size to keep in the car or a first aid kit.
Reader's Digest First Aid (Reader's Digest, £8.99) has advice on common medical emergencies, using clear instructions and photos. There are useful warnings: I didn't know, for example, that you should never perform the Heimlich manoeuvre (an abdominal thrust to remove an obstruction to the airways) on anyone who isn't choking, since it can cause serious organ damage. There's also a flyleaf with advice about checks you should make while waiting for medical help, and space to write observation notes you can then hand over to the professionals.
It's also worth considering a book of home remedies, if only as an antidote to more serious medical volumes. The Reader's Digest 1,001 Home Health Remedies (Reader's Digest, paperback, £14.99) has some interesting suggestions, aside from the traditional lavender for insomnia and lemon for coughs: ever tried crushed aspirin to soften a corn or tennis balls to stop someone snoring? Most of this material is harmless and may be helpful, but it's not based on any scientific evidence that we know of. And some of the suggestions - such as to try ginkgo biloba for asthma - should certainly not replace orthodox medicine.
Owning a good medical dictionary, isn't a bad idea; the Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary (OUP, £10.99) is enough for home purposes. It covers all the important terms and concepts used in medicine, whether in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry or genetics.
• Cherrill Hicks is senior patient information editor at BMJ Group, a subsidiary of the BMA.
