The Handbook is still intended as a convenient, readily accessible synthesis of information useful to the pediatric house officer and pediatric practitioner.”
The reality of a handbook written “by house officers for house officers” continues in its current revision cycle every three years. Holding the sixth and seventeenth editions side by side, it’s hard to ignore that time has added considerable heft around the middle of the Handbook. Although the steadily increasing size perhaps reflects the exponentially increasing amount of medical knowledge and an expanding formulary, its editors have always tried to keep it to a “pocketable” size.
