Abstract
Our growing understanding of infectious diseases must encompass the interaction of two or more infectious agents growing together to cause clinical disease. Although this notion in veterinary medicine is as old as research on the bovine shipping fever complex, the breadth of polymicrobial diseases is ever increasing. In the 21 chapters of this book, nine chapters are directly applicable to veterinary medicine, with specific chapters on bovine viral diarrhea (Chapter 3), atrophic rhinitis (Chapter 10), respiratory viruses and bacteria in cattle (Chapter 12) and swine (Chapter 13), candidal superinfections (Chapter 18), and virus-induced immunosuppression (Chapter 19). Although not specifically veterinary in content, the other chapters are also of considerable scientific interest.
The text is well written and edited, with extensive references. The text is not richly illustrated although diagrams, tables, and a few photos are found sprinkled throughout the chapters. Indeed, because this is a compilation of findings, illustrations are perhaps best left to original materials.
This book is a valuable teaching resource for courses in pathology and infectious disease, and it starts to fill a previously vacant niche that integrates traditional teaching of pathogenesis of single etiologic agents and addresses additive and synergistic relations between two or more infectious agents.