janeowit's Journal: Battle of the Books: Lippencott vs. Katzung

The professor recommended that we get four textbooks for pharmacology. The third years said we really only needed two, Lippincott's Illustrated Review and Katzung's Basic & Clinic Pharmacology. I know, Lippincott sounds like a coloring book or something, but it is only slightly more illustrated than Katzung, because it often shows stick figures acting out the adverse reactions. They are actually made of triangles, but it's pretty funny either way. The ones with edema, constipation and sexual dysfunction are definitely the cutest. But supposedly we'll need this book to simplify things enough to make them understandable.

I've been told we'll need Katzung because the teacher takes test questions out of it, without ever mentioning that information in lecture. There's a quote on the back of the 1200 page tome, "If it's not in Katzung, you probably don't need to know it". And it seems that our professor believes the contrapositive, that you need to know it if it is in Katzung.

As I was studying last night for my quiz this morning, reading Katzung, I really got the sense that I was being laughed at. Half the time I'm not sure the book is in English. Maybe large parts of it are just a bunch of made up words randomly strung together and we're just to stupid to notice? But other times I'm being treated like some kind of simpleminded person.

Here's an example. Let me give you some background, we're talking about autonomic nervous system, which sends it's signals using one of two neurotransmitters, acetycholine or norepinephrine. And each transmitter has it's own type of receptor, but there are also sub-types of the receptors that make the cell receiving the neurotransmitter do different things. Make sense? Well here's what our friend Bertram Katzung has to say, since this is actually one of the 3 chapters (out of 66) that he wrote:

The primary acetylcholine receptor subtypes were named after the alkaloids originally used in their identification: muscarine and nicotine. These nouns were readily converted into adjectives- thus, muscarinic and nicotinic receptors. In the case of receptors associated with noradrenergic nerves, coining simple adjectives from the names of adjectives from the names of the agonists (phenylephrine, isoproterenol, etc.) was not practicable. Therefore, the term adrenoreceptor is widely used to describe receptors that respond to norepinephrine. By analogy, the term cholinoreceptor denotes receptors that respond to acetylcholine. In North America, receptors were colloquially named after the nerves that usually innervate them: thus adrenergic receptor and cholinergic receptors.

He's laughing at us, isn't he? "Readily converted into adjectives"? "By analogy"? "Colloquially named"?

And literally 14 sentences later he states:

Sensory fibers associated associated with the parasympathetic system system exert reflex control over motor outflow in the sympathetic system. Thus, the sensory carotid sinus baroreceptor fibers in the glossopharyngeal nerve have a major influence on sympathetic on sympathetic outflow from the vasomotor center.

I can't quite describe why I feel like this is a joke. Why I think that he thinks this is funny, but that the readers aren't supposed to know it's funny. The way he holds our hand while we walk along a quiet sidewalk, and then how he shoves us into a busy intersection.

Is it just me? Am I just being paranoid?

If only there was a triangle figure for that so I would know.

It really takes a quaneotic

[rk]

sense of balaptrication to consiliorate the off-lorning which is provided by your bessamatic galamparates. Velinostic considerations are, of course, incilargated.

What? Those are all perfectly cromulent words! :-)

Understanding

[Randle_Revar]

To me that was more understandable than Sielwolf when he's on a roll, but maybe that's just me.

(to clarify, I like Sielwolf's JEs, I just don't understand them very well)

P.S. I just realized that reading those selections was a lot like reading any part of the Silmarillion or the beginning part of Dune (gom jabbar? what's that? Fingolfin, Finarfin, Finrod, Fingon? I can't even keep the "Fins" strait!). The sentences are correctly constructed (although not in a way you would normally speak), but it is full o

Re:

[janeowit]

See I think the first part is handled too carefully, too obviously, it doesn't fit in with the rest of the text which is pretty much entirely things like excerpt two. It's a pharmacology reference book, not a children's story!!!

Which is why I get this weird feeling about him.

Which is why you are probably getting a weird feeling about me.

Keep your head up champ

[addle_wit]

You probably you know this, but for the statement "If A, then B" the contrapositive is "If not B, then not A", and in formal logic is considered a tautology. That is when the proposition is true, the contrapositive is always true. So for the statement "If it's not in Katzung, you probably don't need to know it", the contrapositive is "If you need to know it, then it is in Katzung". What you have "that you need to know it if it is in Katzung" takes the form "If not A, not B" even though you wrote it out

Re:

[janeowit]

You and your subtle logic rules. I'm trying, but all this learning is making me forget things I thought I knew.

And wreaking havoc with my sanity. I feel like I have relationships with the authors of my textbooks, since I spend so much time with them. Dipiro, I don't know what I would without him, he is organized and sensible and really likes using diagrams telling you how to make treatment decisions. Thompson, on the other hand, manages to be both quirky and redundant. Her pages aren't numbered so much as l