Highly acclaimed in its first two editions, Ian R. McWhinney's Textbook of Family Medicine is one of the seminal texts in the field. While many family medicine texts simply cover the disorders a practitioner might see in clinical practice, McWhinney defines the principles and practices of family medicine as a separate and distinct field of practice. The initial sections cover basic principles and philosophies of family medicine and a later section discusses approaches to common diseases encountered in practice. The discussions not only address these clinical problems, but each is a workshop for incorporating what it means to be a family physician into everyday practice. The new edition is updated throughout with help from a group of reviewers and a new coauthor, Thomas Freeman, Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, where McWhinney is Professor Emeritus.