This Second Edition of Family Medicine: Principles and Practice presents a scien tific approach to health and illness in the context of mankind''s most enduring societal unit-the family. This is a new book, building on the strengths of the First Edition. The emphasis of this book, like that of the specialty itself, is on the clinical delivery of health care; that is, how the practitioner manages common problems and recognizes uncommon entities encountered in office, hospital, home, and nursing home. In the First Edition, we were faced with the problem of how to organize a family medicine textbook that dealt with clinical topics yet represented more than a series of essays on the specialties for the generalist reader. We began by identifying specific objectives, outlined in the preface to the First Edition. From this evolved an approach which has been called the biopsycho social perspective-inclusion of behavioral, family, social, and cultural aspects of health care integrated with the traditional "manifestations-and-manage ment" textbook model. The First Edition also introduced a comprehensive classification of clinical problems in family medicine now used in curriculum planning in many family practice residency programs.
