Let's talk about The Merck Manual, Second Home Edition...

 
The first Home Edition in 1997 is a hardcover measuring 6.75 by 9.5 inches, with 1509 pages of very readable type and including many color illustrations to help us understand the content.

The only kind of Second Home Edition, from 2003, that I could find this morning at my favorite Chapters/Indigo bookstore is a nasty little paperback, measuring 4 inches by 7 inches, with 1767 pages of very small print and damned few useful illustrations. It's a disgustingly poor substitute for the very well made but now 16-year-old first Home Edition.

Instead of revising these Home Editions with a Third one in 2009, they instead brought out some kind of watered-down home health guide, which isn't the same sort of thing at all. I haven't seen it, nor do I want to.

So if Merck is up to its ass in alligators, and turfing thousands, and struggling to make their usual profits, all I can say is 'Adios, Amigos - you had your chance and you blew it.' Old folks like me don't want a goddamned miniaturized paperback when we want to understand a medical problem, preferably with some nice clear and comprehensible illustrations. So if you guys go 'belly up' it's your own damned fault. If you're looking for 'sympathy' it's in the dictionary between 'shit' and 'syphilis'.