Taber's 19th Edition or Stedmans 27 Edition Medical Dictionary?

[GLORYBEARER]

Hello there,

I'm considering purchasing a medical dictionary from Skyskape. Does anyone know which is the better dictionary? The new Stedmans 27th edition now has over 100,000 words and the Taber's 19th edition has about 55,000, but I don't know which gives better definitions. Thanks for the Help?

[GLORYBEARER]

Alrighty. I figured out on my own which was the better buy. I chose to go with Stedmans 27th edition for $49.95. I compared more than a few medical definitions to see which was more descriptive, easier to understand, complete, etc., and my vote went for Stedmans; although, Taber's definitions were sometimes easier to understand. Stedmans also has about twice as many definitions as Taber's. :)

[kanga]

Glorybearer,

Thanks for the info. Does the Stedmans give a phonetic breakdown of the word? If it doesn't, how about Taber's? Thanks again.

[GLORYBEARER]

Originally posted by kanga
Glorybearer,

Thanks for the info. Does the Stedmans give a phonetic breakdown of the word? If it doesn't, how about Taber's? Thanks again.

It does not give a phonetic breakdown of the word, but it does break them up into syllabic parts. For example, the word Hypsarhythmia, when tapped on, is shown as hyp*sa*rhyth*mia. I know, It's not much help when it comes to some medical terminology. If you really want this feature then I would recommend Taber's. But even still, I would recommend getting Stedmans. I may consider buying Taber's in the future. What's neat about Skyscapes applications is that there is a link button that connects all it's dictionaries together; so if your looking up a word in Stedmans and want to, perhaps, compare definitions with another medical dictionary, such as Taber's, then you just a tap away.

[GLORYBEARER]

Actually, I don't totally remember if the Taber's dictionary has its words broken down phonetically. I'll have to check again.

[sdkat2]

Has anyone tried Dorland's? I have both Taber's and Dorland's and find that I use Dorland's much more often.

[GLORYBEARER]

Ok. Taber's does not have it's words in phonetic or syllabic form. So, again I would recommend Stedmans over Tabers. I've not tried Dorlands. I've heard it was a known name like Stedmans though.

[GLORYBEARER]

Hey sdkat2, what edition of Dorlands are you using.

[GLORYBEARER]

Skyscape has Dorland's 26th Edition which has 33,000+ medical terms, but Dorland's is already on its 29th edition with over 100,000 terms. Does anyone know of a company that puts out Dorlands 29th edition for Palm.

[jnaguit]

I've been using Dorland's myself. I find it pretty adequate. Along with the Washington Manual series and the Dr Drugs database, they've been my daily companions thru most of my 3rd year of med school (got my NR70 just last August) and it sure beats trying to tote around a couple mini-texts at a time (even if they are "pocket sized").

My only complaint about the texts is that I wish Hi-Res+ was supported (to either support smaller higher res fonts or minimize the VG area to get more info on the screen at a time).

[GLORYBEARER]

I agree jnaguit. I too would like to see Skyscapes Dictionaries implement Hires or Hires+. They ought to at least implement Hires if not Hires+. BDicty has Hires+, but I heard their dictionary lacks many terms.

[jnaguit]

Yeah I don't really have an issue with the comprehensiveness of the content of Dorland's vs. Stedman's. Maybe Dorland's is a little weak on eponyms for various conditions, tests, etc.

I hate eponyms by the way but they're seemingly unavoidable in medicine...guess in medicine we're a pretty vain bunch so once we come up with something we need to attach our name to it instead of labeling in a way that is truly more descriptive...it may be more cumbersome but at least it makes a bit more sense in understanding the actual process.

I use the Eponyms database by Andrew Yee (http://eponyms.net yee@post.harvard.edu) to compensate. I lose the interprogram linking to all the other Skyscape apps but most of the time when I need to find out terms in Eponyms, their kind of esoteric and it's just because I have a prof who's trying to pimp me a bit during a case presentation just to see how much tedious detail I know. :)

[Unregistered]

Are you able to run Stedmans on palm OS 4.1? On skyscape, it says requires palm os 5.

[tanker_bob]

I've been using Dorland's, having chosen it over Tabor's. I found the former's definitions generally more illuminating than the latter. I haven't tried Steadman's.

jnaguit - Thanks for the link!