Wheater's Functional Histology: Review

Pros

• Emphasis on illustrations - While focusing the lens of your microscope on your histology slide might bring nightmares, this book’s focus on illustrations is the light at the end of the tunnel. Approximately 70% of each page, on average, is covered by images, while the rest consists of text. Thus, the days of endless reading are long gone if you use this book. Histology is as visual as it gets, so learning it using efficiently labeled, large, crisp, and crystal clear images as the ones found in ‘Wheater’s Functional Histology’ makes everything at least bearable (it is histology after all…)

• Minimum text - The emphasis on images might be the light at the end of the tunnel, but the scant use of text is the highway that brings you through the passage. That 30% of text that you need to get through feels like child’s play compared to the brain numbing amount found in 99% of today’s textbooks. Reading ‘Wheater’s Functional Histology 6th edition’ makes you feel like a ninja - you get in, get the job done, and then you get out because you only see the fundamentals in enough detail to understand the concepts without drowning in them.
• Review tables - What do you need to know during your histology exams and clinical practice? You need to know what tissue it is, what is normal, and if relevant, what is abnormal about it. In other words, you need to know morphology landmarks inside out and back to front, even in your sleep. Well, this textbook has an ace up its sleeve to cover this too in the form of review tables at the end of each chapter. If you thought that the modest amount of text used throughout the book was amazing, these tables will downright project you into heaven. Filled only with the essential landmarks in the form of key-points, together with illustration references, they are the ultimate revision tool for your upcoming exam!

• Clinical boxes - Dotted throughout the latest edition of ‘Wheater’s Histology’ are goldmines of information known as clinical boxes. Putting concepts into context makes them more tangible because clinical information represents real life-examples that you will likely be faced with. Plus it’s that much more interesting to see that what you read actually has a direct application.
• Student consult - The textbook might sound like a sweet deal due to all its pros, but the interactive, electronic version together with a compilation of all the microscopy illustrations, and USMLE-style review questions definitely sound like the cherry on top. What’s not to like about free addons that can propel your learning even further?

Cons

• Limited clinical information/boxes - A few minutes ago you read that ‘Wheater's Functional Histology 6th edition’ puts the theory into practice through the use of clinical boxes, making everything nice and handy. Weeeell... not so fast. Those boxes are few and far between, and many span the length of a few lines only. It can certainly provide you a flavor for the applications of histology, but you need to find another resource for the real deal.
• No summaries - This textbook has no summaries, plain and simple. The review tables are trying to hold their own, but they are mostly outlining the fundamental morphological landmarks. A lot of those tables feel incomplete compared to the amount of information used to explain each tissue or organ. You cannot ‘summarise’ the entire spleen in four sentences when its entire histology is explained in three pages - that’s just fantasy. In addition, the illustrations are only referenced in the review boxes, so there is a lot of page flicking back and forth to revise the bullet points. Exercise is good, but this kind of arm workout doesn’t sound like my cup of tea - is it yours?
• Ineffective quizzes - After you’ve spent days, weeks, and months studying, you eventually want to wash away the sweat and tears by reviewing what you have learned. It’s your opportunity to calm your mind and prove to yourself that your tireless studying has in fact succeeded in implanting some knowledge into your brain. ‘Wheater's Functional Histology’ is certainly capable of offering you this perk through its clinical, USMLE-style questions - but only in a limited dose. After you go through them once, you will recognize and remember the answers because the questions are not adaptable or random. In addition, the questions cannot be modified to suit the needs of both beginners and experts alike and quite frankly, they can be impossible for a beginner that wants to learn rather than revise. (hint hint: custom built quizzes and quizzes of multiple levels that can teach you a topic from scratch do exist - you just need to know where to look!). 
• Access to resources - The additional ‘Student Consult’ is indeed attractive and beneficial, but is it really free? To access it, you need to buy the textbook itself, so it’s a chicken and egg scenario.
• Textbook - What do you see as an explanation if you open a dictionary and search for the word ‘textbook’? Let me tell you - big, thick, heavy, pricey, and boring. Well, not really, but you get the point. While lifting ‘Wheater's Functional Histology 6th edition’ will not make you the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can certainly feel the 1.2 kg dragging you and your backpack down. Your wallet will also feel the price and your sanity will be drained by the 450 pages, which can become a challenge after a few hours of non-stop studying. 

Wheater's Functional Histology vs. Kenhub

So, what can you do? Firstly, you can start using the latest edition of ‘‘Wheater's Functional Histology’ because it’s one of the best histology learning resources on the market suited for students. It cuts away the fluff and text, concentrates on the fundamentals, exploits illustrations, reviews the information, and offers you additional online resources. This textbook certainly does some things rather well. 

However, it is one of the best and does some things well, so there is room for improvement. There are other options available which can make your life easier, depending on your preferred study methods. A good starting point would be Kenhub, an online learning platform that places the most famous, efficient, and easy to use study methods literally at your fingertips. Here are some differences between those two resources:

When it comes to Kenhub, you can see that all roads lead to Rome. You have your own unique way of learning compared to your best friend, and also depending on your current mood, tiredness, and so on. As a result, you don’t have only one way to encode information, but a myriad of options (trust us, you don’t have a preferred learning style, that’s just a myth). Do you feel rested in the mornings and want to learn something slowly and in-depth? Pick an article about your favourite topic and read through it - this guide to studying human anatomy is a good starting point. 

After reading a couple of hours, do you want to relax your neck a bit, enjoy some tea, but still learn, just in a more laid back way? Choose a video, hit ‘Play’ and enjoy every second of it! As you know, repetition is the mother of all learning, so at the end of the day you need to revise what you’ve learned during the past few hours. What better way there is than to use our quizzes, which use spaced repetition and are fully customizable according to your specific needs and wants? If you don’t know where to start your learning at all, don’t worry because our round up of learning strategies have your back. Even better, all of this fits into the palm of your hand because they automatically adapt to any electronic device. What are you waiting for? Go on and try it out for free!

Like anything in life, there are bad, good, and excellent histology learning resources. Take note that there are no flawless ones. The best resource is not the one which is completely free of mistakes - rather,  it’s the resource best suited to the way that you personally learn most effectively. Remember that a health science career is a long road, so you need to pick study resources that you can stick to for a long time. Good luck and enjoy your studies!