• Matthew Kurlan, DO

The author attended Rowan Univ. (formerly UMDNJ) & completed residency in emergency medicine at Midwestern Univ. (formerly CCOM) & was board-certified in emergency medicine in 1996. For over a decade, he practiced full-time emergency medicine in the midwest before moving to San Diego to open his private urgent care office.

• Evolution of the 1st Edition:

“During clinical rotations & internship, I always admired classmates who could not only recall the details of everything they’d read, but even provide references to journal articles. For me, trying to keep up seemed impossible. Every time I needed to look something up (pre-internet era), I’d find a big fat reference book, turn to its lousy index, & then scan through page after page trying to find the one detail I sought. It was a challenge to store that all in my head, so I started keeping alphabetized notes in a pocket-size ring binder, which came to be known as my ‘pocket brain.’ Over the years, it grew in breadth until it was literally bursting at the seams. I’d refer to it to look up facts or to quiz my junior colleagues, who would often say, ‘you ought to publish that!’ So one day, I began the process of typing, organizing, cross-referencing, re-organizing, & verifying facts & figures. Since I could not find a publishing house willing to sell the book in ring-binder format, I self-published the 1st edition of The Pearl Dictionary in 1996.”

• New 8th Edition:

Obsessively updated with new data from journal articles & conferences… This new 8th edition was published in paperback format in 2016. For practicing clinicians, it still lives up to its original logo- “the quickest way to find the facts!”

One of these is Leonardo Da Vinci’s original Notebook (c. 1490). The other is the author’s original hand-written Pocket Brain (c. 1990). Notice the similarity!