It's difficult to know how many people get seriously injured in the wilderness each year, although a national study from a few years ago suggested that some 213,000 ER arrivals started in outdoor recreation. What is clear is that Paul S. Auerbach could be those folks' best friend.
A professor of surgery and a mountain climber, Auerbach, MS '89, co-founded the Wilderness Medical Society and edited the textbook Wilderness Medicine (newly in its sixth edition). The book handles unfortunate events from abalone poisoning to zygomaticomaxillary fracture, with the dire index between those topics spanning 63 pages. New to the book's detailed professional advice about vast varieties of exposure, predation, envenomation and toxicity is a chapter on "Global Humanitarian Medicine and Disaster Relief."
Should you need to reduce someone's dislocated shoulder using the Stimson technique, Wilderness Medicine (Elsevier Mosby, $199) is heavy enough—at 10 pounds, 10 ounces—to use as a traction weight. Mercifully, this edition of the nearly 2,300-page tome is also available on Kindle, Nook and iPad.
