This handbook compiled by Dr. Rubin with the help of 21 collaborators, consists of a synopsis description of some 700 malformations with brief collateral information on incidence, heredity, prognosis, and treatment.
Unfortunately, there is a paucity of clinical photographs to augment the descriptions. In a book of over 700 syndromes, there are only 35 photographs, 17 of which are concentrated in the ophthalmology section. The interpretation of the background literature of some of the malformations is oversimplified and at times uncritical. An obvious example is the citing of an old reference on amelia in which the absence of an arm is attributed to maternal stress in the third and fourth week of gestation and carpal absence to stress in the fifth and sixth week.
The practitioner or student looking for identification of an unfamiliar anomaly will probably find it in this book, but the brief descriptions, lack of illustrative