From The New England Journal of Medicine In an increasingly technological world, humans are attracted to the outdoors, "organic" foods, and weekend forays for exotic mushrooms. They are thus exposed to snake venom, botulism, and deadly hepatotoxins. As we seek political domination, the weapons of war include nuclear bombs, biologic agents, and evil concoctions such as nerve gas. As pharmaceutical scientists release ever more potent agents to mitigate high blood pressure, arrhythmias, depression, clogged prostates, and everything else that ails us, the pill vials sit in the medicine cabinet waiting for an inquisitive child or a morose adult to gulp a fistful. Middle Americans labor in factories and on farms, inhaling or absorbing heavy metals, noxious fumes, pesticides, and other industrial chemicals. Teenagers don their headphones and imagine rock music as celestial communication, with the assistance of marijuana, LSD, and the designer drug of the month. We smoke cigarettes, abuse narcotics, get stung by bees, bleach our skin, undergo chemotherapy, seek herbal remedies, and succumb to carbon monoxide in igloos. Like it or not, toxins are ubiquitous. The third edition of Clinical Management of Poisoning and Drug Overdose instructs the clinician about the major considerations related to exposure to natural and artificial toxins, as well as providing a comprehensive approach to clinical management. The subject matter is sufficiently diverse that the editors have wisely chosen