Cracking the case: Notes of a poison detective

New Springer book provides essential information for healthcare professionals | Real-life experience of a toxicologist presented in an entertaining yet instructive way

Heidelberg | New York, 6 April 2017

Poison information specialists answer a variety of medical problems over the phone. In the course of their career, they usually accumulate a wealth of experience. However, there are cases that provide a challenge even for well-trained and capable experts:  What do you do if 40 kids have turned blue – all at the same time? A restaurant’s toilet water suddenly contains bubbles and customers complain of stomach pains? Could there be a serial killer in the Intensive Care Unit? Steven M. Marcus cracks these and other cases in Medical Toxicology: Antidotes and Anecdotes. 

Solving medical puzzles requires thinking outside the box and is crucial to saving lives. Unfortunately, there is no panacea for how to come up with the idea that saves the game. Dr. Marcus says, “I suppose all we can do is be vigilant and hope that if we become sick, there will be a knowledgeable physician to make the diagnosis.”

In order to help equip colleagues with the tools they need to successfully tackle medical puzzles, Steven Marcus has compiled a collection of challenging and unusual reports that demonstrate medical problem-solving and differential diagnosis in action. He recounts mysterious cases from his career, pairing each mystery with its scientific explanation. Exact and informative, the book is an essential clinical text for practicing physicians, toxicologists, poison control specialists, medical examiners and coroners. Simultaneously it serves as a supplementary learning text for graduate students or those at an early stage in their professional career. Apart from that, Medical Toxicology: Antidotes and Anecdotes offers a good read for any would-be medical detective.

Dr. Marcus is the former Executive Director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, Emeritus Professor of the Department of Emergency Medicine and Emeritus Associate Professor of the Department of Pediatrics at Rutgers, New Jersey Medical School. As such, he looks back at over thirty years of medical, clinical, and forensic toxicology.

Steven M. Marcus
Medical Toxicology: Antidotes and Anecdotes
2017 
Hardcover € 29,99 | £16.50 | $29.99 
ISBN 978-3-319-51027-9
Also available as an eBook ISBN 978-3-319-51029-3