If you play you pay--Infections of Leisure

When I was a librarian at Ohio State's Veterinary Medicine library, I would buy textbooks for our reserve collection. Many academic libraries don't--in some fields like education or history that could break the bank. However, there's nothing like a good, solid, frequently revised and updated textbook to save you hours of time both in research and reading. What you'll find in chapter bibliographies, notes and illustrations could save you hours of searching on-line databases or poking around in Google, plus there's been expert editorial review for quality. Let's face it, most of us aren't writing or reading for publication but for information.

I won't request the 4th ed. of Infections of Leisure from my public library--I know what the response will be--you have an OSU address, get it from them. Well, no library in OhioLink has a copy; OSU has the 3rd (2004), parts of which have been digitized. Maybe it's in the pipeline, or maybe it's just the old librarian's prejudice against textbooks in their collections. But read this MD reviewer in the Jan. 6, 2010 JAMA:

"As one who has completed an infectious diseases followship, I was astounded by the amount of new material I learned from this book--even gleaning one particularly salient fact from a table comparing infections acquired from hamsters, gerbils, and guinea pigs."

So what are infections of leisure? For a huge number of us that means our pets--dogs, cats, birds, horses, rodents. Or even our neighbors' pets who are burying their feces in our garden, or dropping them where birds can help spread the problem. For others it is combining the ancient practice of tattooing and body piercing with 21st century pathogens or cruise ship travel. Titles of the 19 chapters are:

At the shore / Mark A Clemence and Richard L Guerrant
Freshwater : from lakes to hot tubs / Bertha S Ayi and David Dworzack
The camper's uninvited guests / Gordon E Schutze and Richard F Jacobs
Infections in the garden / Burke A Cunha and Diane H Johnson
With man's best friend / Julie M Collins and Bennett Lorber
Around cats / Ellie J C Goldstein and Craig E Greene
Feathered friends / Matthew E Levison
Less common house pets / Bruno B Chomel
With man's worst friend : the rat / James G Fox
Closed due to rabies / Jesse D Blanton and John W Krebs
Sports : the infectious hazards / Arezou Minooee, Leland S Rickman, and Geeta Gupta
Traveling abroad / Martin S Wolfe
From boudoir to bordello : sexually transmitted diseases and travel / Jonathan M Zenilman
Infections from body piercing and tattoos / Mukesh Patel and C Glenn Cobbs
Infectious diseases at high altitude / Buddha Basnyat, Thomas A Cumbo, and Robert Edelman
Infectious risks of air travel / Alexandra Mangili and Mark Gendreau
Perils of the petting zoo / John R Dunn and Frederick J Angulo
Infections on cruise ships / Vivek Kak
Exotic and trendy cuisine / Jeffrey K Griffiths

Humans are surprisingly smug about being able to control the planet or finding miniscule dangerous amounts of a chemical in processed food. Yet they can't control their own dangerous personal behaviors like oral/anal sex or cleaning up after their pets. We'd rather pass legislation costing billions but remain ignorant of many novel pathogens that jump from animal to man which we encounter every day--an area we could control. Maybe the library could buy one less book on global warming.

If you're interested, I've seen book sites selling this book for anything from $66 to $150. So shop around.