By JEFF MEYERS
CADYVILLE — A recently published reference guide for health and medicine offers the public a resource for understanding health in clearly written language.
"The Dictionary of Health Education," written by David A. Bedworth and Albert E. Bedworth, includes thousands of entries on health, ranging from descriptions of diseases to causes and treatments of medical conditions.
"It's primarily directed at those professionals in schools or in various health professions and those who have an interest in health education and disease prevention," David Bedworth said. "But it's also useful for the general public. It's an easy-to-read reference book for various health issues that impact us all."
MANY FIELDS
The Bedfords started working on the project in the 1980s, and though Albert Bedworth died in 2004, David thought it was appropriate to include his father's name as author because of the extensive work they both put into the book.
"It was a long, long process," the younger Bedworth said, noting that he also collaborated with his father on two other health-related books. "So much of this was done by him that I thought he still needed to be co-editor."
When they first started the project, the Bedworths collected information the "old-fashioned way," David said.
His father built a 4-foot-long box to hold 4-by-6 note cards, each one holding a health-related reference.
"We had thousands of cards, all in alphabetical order, that I started to put on the computer after he died," David said.
The Bedworths also continually updated the cards over those 20 years as health care continued to make its own advancements.
Then, in 2005, David made contact with Oxford Press through an agent, and the process to put the collection into print began.
The volume was published this past September.
"Health education draws from many fields, including psychology, sociology, chemistry, botany," he said. "When you bring all that together, health education can provide the public access to the technical language used in the health-care field."
IN-DEPTH VIEW
The authors used hundreds of sources to compile the information. The volume itself has a six-page bibliography identifying further sources of data.
"The reader can get an in-depth view of a topic beyond just the definition," David said, showing how one entry can lead to several others, all related to a specific topic.
Oxford immediately showed an interest in the volume, which was originally about 1,000 pages, but asked David to cut the work to fewer than 500 pages.
"We compromised," he said, noting that the book is 540 pages. "The terms I eliminated are terms I thought the book could do without and not lose the purpose of the volume — the more obscure terms such as botany references."
David expects the publishers will seek updates regularly and so continues collecting health-related information for the volume.
He previously published three textbooks in health education between 1977 and 1992, and he is currently working on another dictionary, this time identifying specific types of psychotic drugs. Toying with the idea of writing a novel, he is also collecting information for a biography on a character from the 1800s who lived in Ithaca and was hanged for murder and robbery.
Albert Bedworth began teaching in the Ithaca School District and taught summers at Plattsburgh State in the 1960s, an experience that helped attract the younger Bedworth to the North Country years later.
E-mail Jeff Meyers at: jmeyers@pressrepublican.com
