Medicine for the Backcountry: a Practical Guide to Wilderness First Aid (3rd Edition) by Buck Tilton and Frank Hubbell

The Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT 06437.

Book Reviews by Mel Baughman

Quite frankly, this is a watered down version of Wilderness Medicine, the book described above. Its target audience is backcountry travelers, not EMTs, but I'd still rather have Forgey's book in my pack. Having read both books, I cannot recommend Medicine for the Backcountry. I was disappointed in its more limited description of symptoms and treatments. It also persists in using far too much medical jargon although the target audience is the layperson. Medical doctors seem to be a pompous lot and cannot bring themselves to write in an every day language. I kept wanting to take out my red pen and mark up the text to show the authors how to write a page so common folks could understand it. There also were typos or grammatical errors on every third page. For a Third Edition, it really needed some professional editing.