Take, for example, single umbilical artery. A distinguished retired paediatrician telephoned me, concerned about his grandfetus which had been found through antenatal scanning to be one umbilical artery short. I scrutinized the index of the new Forfar & Arneil (FA try artery— no. Try the index of the current Nelson Textbook (same publishing stable, cheaper, American)—yes, on p. 528, a concise informative paragraph. Try Google—nearly 1300 citations, reproducible instantly on my printer and no heavy book to balance on the knees. The moral? The talents of editors and contributors might be put to better use in more contemporary information transfer. In F&A the shape of things to come is indicated by a disc behind the front cover. So how is it for me? I have used the new FA this wayward index again) of coeliac disease; and cow's milk intolerance and constipation may be linked in the absence of atopy. Enuresis is discussed more informatively under nephrology than under psychiatry, from which it should have been blue pencilled. My main beef, however, is with this book's two-dimensional context of child life and health—a weakness common to most textbooks. The three principal elements to clinical paediatric practice are diagnosis, treatment and population medicine, all within a whole child/family framework. Though management of defined conditions and the public health of paediatrics are dealt with soundly, the real challenge to the personal physician is unravelling the cause of symptoms and relieving those which defy diagnostic classification, including the whole fascinating (and evidence-limited) spectrum of functional illness, and those which do not remit when the disease thought to cause them is treated 'successfully'. The excellent short chapter on pain management makes a good start in this respect: now for breathlessness, dizziness—and fatigue. I thank the families of McIntosh, Helms and Smyth for loaning them to this project and salute them on the result. The style and content are even and they have largely succeeded in avoiding overlap. Do not baulk at its cost: at just over £1 per contributor you are getting a bargain (and a largely British one, despite the American spelling). This 6th edition was born (4.5 kg) just 5 years after the 5th, and the life expectancy of its knowledge base may prove even shorter. In what form the 7th will be presented I leave you, dear reader, to guess.