It goes like this: Many of you may know I have 30 minutes of private study every morning before I start to work. In general, I read some randomly selected textbook or my own notes, and my recent morning reading is the chapter on infectious disease in Kumar & Clark's Clinical Medicine.
Don't be surprised - yet. The really amazing bit is, I am reading the fifth edition of this textbook, published in 2002.
Many of you (including my wife) would yell, "Wouldn't that be outdated ?"
Not quite. In fact, besides a few areas with rapid advance (for example, HIV infection and multi-resistant tuberculosis), the old version is entirely satisfactory, and I would prefer this slightly outdated volume than the 2011 (or even 2012) edition of other less well written ones - to say the least, Kumar & Clark has stood the test of time.
And, by now, the consideration comes back to the old question that I was discussing a few days ago (see http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2011/02/determination.html): It is not the ability to read (or even interpret) the latest journal publication, but the habit and determination to study a slightly outdated textbook being the critical core value of the life-long learning skill.
PS. Seriously I prefer the even older editions of Kumar & Clark - the chapter on infectious disease was actually better written in the last millennium.
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