Customer Reviews

Merck Veterinary Manual CD-ROM (Win/Mac)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Probably the best general veterinary reference book around. Although its primary users are veterinarians and vet technicians, it is relatively easy to understand for the average animal owner interested in learning more about the animal's physiology, behavior, management, nutrition, pharmacology, toxicology and general management. Even though most of the book's 2300+ pages deal with domestic animals, it has a few chapters devoted to exotic and Zoo animals.

Very useful book. Exposition language very easy. Altough my english isn't good, I understand and MVM help to me.

This is a great book. If you already know alot, then you will be all set. I've only been an assistant for 2years, and reading this is difficult, if I didn't have a vet dictionary I would be lost. If you are well trained then I see this as a wonderful book to have, maybe invaluable.

The Merck Manual is a MUST HAVE for all vet students. It discusses most species and the common problems of each. It has an excellent appendix with all sorts of useful information including normal TPRs, conversion charts, and zoonoses, etc. While it does not go into great depth on pathophysiology, it is a perfect place to look up quick rule outs and basics. No matter what species or organ system we're studying, I use my Merck nearly every day.

For a layperson like myself, the Merck Vet Guide is a handy reference book to have at hand. The writing is terse and concise, as you would expect from a guide for professionals. As such it (unsurprisingly) uses dense medical terminology, and is not beginner-friendly.

However, in it's breadth of coverage, it necessarily skims the surface of most of it's topics. So, someone looking for in-depth information on any given topic will likely be disappointed. I suspect few vets (or advanced vet students) ever consult the MVM very often in their practice due to this limitation.

Further, constant advances in diagnosis and treatment will plague any printed guide, such as this, that will inevitably be dated as soon as it is printed.

But those are the inevitable constraints of writing a comprehensive guide such as this. All in all, it is a worthwhile book for the technically-inclined layperson or vet student to have at hand.

Iam a Medical Doctor(human medicine), and I work in my wife's cattle's farm, all most as a general management and cowboy. I have learn a lot about how to do with the caws when in the open field, and it works a lot for me.
'My youngest daugther loves it because i also see her dog...and works for me...and for her dog.
It took me a lot to learn how to handle it, beacuse I use to use the merck manual of medicine, and there is a great difference, but its not the books fault, its just mine...

The Merck Veterinary Manual serves the same purpose as its sister publication, the Merck Manual of Medical Information for human medicine. Anyone in veterinary medicine beyond the second year of vet school is well beyond the scope of this book. It is somewhat useful for the lay public, but a little information can be dangerous when it isn't put into perspective.

I've used the MVM for my dairy goats, dogs, cats & turtle :-) for probably 10 years. I'm an RN, so I can understand most of the medical terms used, but do still have to keep my Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary close by to look up many words it uses. Despite this fact, the book is a must have for breeders of any type animal. If all you know is a symptom (ie, itching, lameness, hair loss), this word will often (but not always) be listed in the index. A fault in this area is that not ALL pages are listed where the word is mentioned. Many times, I find information on one thing while I am reading about another thing & I wonder why that page was not also listed in the index. I just jot down these type things on the Notes pages in the back, for my own reference. If this book was indexed to include all the information it possesses, it would be almost perfect. This is the ONLY reason I do not rate this book a 5. But still overall, from the breeder's books I've read, this one is the most concise & complete for most animals. For each disease entity, there will be listed the Etiology (causes), Clinical Findings & Diagnosis (symptoms & other facts leading to a diagnosis), Treatment (meds or management suggestions) and sometimes a Prognosis (outcome prediction) and Control (measures needed to prevent future cases). Information & dosages of drugs for many animals are listed, along with specific information on drug families (adverse reactions, toxicology, etc). And the Zoonoses section shows which diseases are contagious to humans or other animals. The Poisonous Plant chart is also very helpful.

The Merck Veterinary Manual has been the bible for the veterinary students (and the beginning veterinary practitioners) for ever, and deservingly so. This 8th edition is even better than the previous one. If you don't have a professional library that covers every possible subject in veterinary medicine (or don't have the time to look for ever for a subject), you need the Merck. It has information not only on nearly every disease but also on physical examination and procedures. I learned, for example, that in an X-ray machine mA represented the amount of radiation while the kV represented its tissue penetration. Can you put it shorter and clearer? I can't! It has no references but it is not a reference book. It may be somewhat difficult for the non-initiated but it is for the profesional. All around, a great book!

Want to know what to feed your sheep? Or your lizard? Want to know why your cow has the sniffles? This book has it!

I have an old dogeared (heh) copy of the people book these folks put out. I decided to pick up the veterinary manual after acquiring a rabbit. (I was using the people book to look up feline ailments, which mapped extremely well to the entries in the people book. The rabbit is a little space alien, as far as that goes.) I sat down with some crackers and a cup of coffee and had a blast riffling through the book and pondering over such delightful words are ruminants and ungulates.

I felt the book was not the most intuitively organized book I've ever seen, but it's a great reference manual (once you get the hang of it) and is fun to flip through if the only animals you have ever dealt with have been cats and dogs.

One big problem is that I will go along reading something and have no idea what species I am reading about. I'm a little concerned about what I am going to do in an emergency. "Now is that a lagomorph problem? Oh wait. It's talking about the patient's trunk! Or is that a uvula?"

So, I liked it, but not as much as, say "The Book of the Cat". The rabbit did not (he bit it and shoved it onto the floor) and the cats want to own it (they rubbed their chins on it.)

Its a great peek into the lives of farmers and zookeepers at any rate. I wonder how veterinarians feel about it?