This textbook of disease symptoms and diagnosis was first written by Dr Charles Seward in the closing stages of World War II when he was serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in India. In it he adopted the approach of classifying the causes of a disease according to the symptoms and signs it produced, rather than its aetiology and pathology. It aims to bridge the gap between the doctor's theoretical knowledge and the patient's symptoms to help achieve an accurate diagnosis 0 the basis of management and treatment. The revised edition marks the 40th year of the manual, which has been rewritten to include research on AIDS, Alport's syndrome, epiglottitis, adult respiratory distress syndrome, anorexia nervosa, diabetes mellitus, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, Reye's syndrome, parvovirus infection, IgA nephropathy, hypothyroidism, the haemolytic-uraemic syndrome and the neuroleptic malignant syndrome.