"Knee replacement is bound to fail-providing the patient lives long enough". There is some truth in this hoary cliche, so why write books on the subject? I think the answer is that knee replacement has at last become established and even respectable. The more absurd surgical extravaganzas have been recognised and discarded; today a patient can expect to rely on his new knee to serve him with comfort for a fair number of years. Of course even the early knee replacements often made the patie...

In medical writing brevity is the kiss of life. Nevertheless most articles are unnecessarily lengthy and publications continue to multiply. Pity the poor reader! A succession of unduly long articles is bad enough, but if each is followed by a plethora of references the effect is positively daunting. Even the reader who is impressed by the length of a list may question the author's discrimination. Were all those references needed? Were they helpful? Has the authorreally read every one? All ...

References, to the reader, are like insulin to the diabetic: when needed they are indispensable, but in excess they induce coma. Moreover, when references are simply shovelled into a text in great gobbets, it is hard to resist the suspicion that the author has not read them all, but has copied some from a previous author's list. The story is told of one author who mischievously included in his list a bogus reference to an obscure foreign journal, and gleefully noted its frequent appearance...