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Few textbooks ask to be read from cover to cover, and even fewer textbooks deserve to be. The Comprehensive Textbook of AIDS Psychiatry, edited by Mary Ann Cohen (a member of our Academy) and Jack Gorman is one of those textbooks. In its careful organization and global scope it invites the reader to begin with the first page and read carefully through the text to the last section. I can assure the reader of being well-rewarded for the effort. This textbook is unusually strong, both in the writing and the organization of the material. This may have much to do with the involvement of Dr. Cohen in so many of the chapters in the book (more than 25%, in fact) The writing is at a very scholarly level, with plenty of clinical examples which sharpen the insights offered in the text.
I feel in a particular position, having been at the very beginning of my training at the very beginning of the AIDS pandemic, as were both Cohen and Gorman. There is no substitute for personal experience in bringing the “sticky floor sign” or the “sheet sign” to life, as Cohen does in her opening chapter. Both of these “signs” were the clinical manifestations of gross discrimination borne out of the fear, aversion, and pessimism which accompanied the opening phases of the pandemic. The “sticky floor” was the result of the weak and ataxic patient who would spill, who couldn't always make it to the bathroom, and the lack of attention to mopping the floors. The “sheet sign” resulted when a patient literally hid under the sheet, a combination of negativism and depression colluded with by staff who were just as happy not to be confronted by a cachectic, mortally ill young person, who would die no matter what we did, and who we feared might infect us, and by extension, those we loved. In the future, others may write about such things as of historical interest, or they may be dropped entirely from textbooks which instruct contemporary practitioners on the best current practices. To my mind,