True Medical Detective Stories
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Narrated by:
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James H. Kiser
About this listen
Modern technology has given rise to electronic medical records, remote monitoring systems, and satellite-enabled real-time examinations in which patient and physician might be separated by thousands of miles. Yet, when it comes to diagnosing difficult cases, the clinician's strongest asset might just be one of the oldest tools of the medical profession - careful listening. True Medical Detective Stories is a fascinating compendium of 19 true-life medical cases, each solved by clinical deduction and facilitated by careful listening. These accounts present puzzling low-tech cases - most of them serious, some humorous - that were solved either at the bedside or by epidemiological studies. Dr. Clifton Meador's book is a wonderful contribution to the genre of medical detective stories mastered by the legendary Berton Roueche'. As a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1944 until his death 50 years later, Roueche' popularized this form, which has provided source material for feature films and most recently supplied scenarios featured in medical television dramas, such as House. While Hollywood frequently oversimplifies and elides the real clinical situations, True Medical Detective Stories sets the record straight with a voice of authority and an engaging style rooted in the fact that most of the cases presented involve Dr. Meador's actual patients. Dr. Meador discovered Berton Roueche's writing as a teenager, when he first read Eleven Blue Men. In an astonishing twist of fate, Roueche', in later years, traveled to Nashville to meet with Dr. Meador and discuss one of his cases, with Roueche's account published posthumously under the title, The Man Who Grew Two Breasts. In a fitting tribute to Roueche' this perplexing case is revisited by Dr. Meador in the opening chapter of this highly enjoyable book. True Medical Detective Stories is a captivating read that will keep you marveling over the idiosyncrasies of the human body.
©2012 Clifton K. Meador (P)2015 Clifton K. MeadorListeners also enjoyed...
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At one time heart disease was a death sentence. By the middle of the 20th century, it was killing millions, and, as with the Black Death centuries before, physicians stood helpless. Visionaries, though, had begun to make strides earlier. On September 7, 1895, Ludwig Rehn successfully sutured the heart of a living man with a knife wound to the chest for the first time.
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Great review of the landmark achievements in Cardiology.
- By Trauma NP on 12-14-15
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Asleep
- The Forgotten Epidemic That Became Medicine’s Greatest Mystery
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.
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Scary, and still unsolved, medical mystery
- By joyce on 12-14-14
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Patient Care
- Death and Life in the Emergency Room
- By: Paul Seward MD
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Recalling remarkable cases - and people - from a career launched in the first days of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Paul Seward leads us in his memoir through suspenseful diagnoses and explorations of anatomy. Within the conditions of great stress and rapid decision-making that are routine in the ER, Dr. Seward tells us that medical staff must be more than technicians of the body: They must be restorers of the human.
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very enjoyable
- By Patricia Oxenham on 03-21-19
By: Paul Seward MD
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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Falling into the Fire
- A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
- By: Christine Montross
- Narrated by: Christine Montross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Falling into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross's thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling into the Fire brings us inside the doctor’s mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind.
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Buy this book! and READ it
- By joyce on 08-15-13
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The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth
- And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine
- By: Thomas Morris
- Narrated by: Thomas Morris, Ruper Farley
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A puzzling series of dental explosions beginning in the 19th century is just one of many strange tales that have long lain undiscovered in the pages of old medical journals. Award-winning medical historian Thomas Morris delivers one of the most remarkable, cringe-inducing collections of stories ever assembled.
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Boring Toilet Humor
- By Nemo on 01-30-20
By: Thomas Morris
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The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
- By: Anne Fadiman
- Narrated by: Pamela Xiong
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.
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Good audiobook but narrator struggles with basic pronunciation
- By Kate on 06-04-15
By: Anne Fadiman
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
What listeners say about True Medical Detective Stories
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DabOfDarkness
- 03-10-15
So very educational & entertaining!
This book is a compilation of 19 medical mystery cases, the details of which were collected over the years by the author, who is also a respected medical doctor. Some are humorous and all are interesting. The underlying focus of this book is relying on listening to what a patient is or is not telling the doctor, instead of fancy modern testing.
This book was both entertaining and educational – one of my favorite combinations. We start off with a case of a fellow male doctor developing breasts. Apparently, this is not all that uncommon for men suffering from testicular or adrenal gland cancer, or those who partake of marijuana. Haha! You would think that last tid bit would be better circulated among college students. Just to satisfy your curiosity, the gentlemen was not suffering from any of these and the source of his extra estrogen was of a more personal nature. *eyes slant towards the wife*
The case studies take off from there wandering from botulism to clay eating to self-inflicted injuries/illness to mass hysteria to several others. It was a fascinating mix of well understood (if little seen) cause and effect to the still not fully understood. I was especially interested in the few cases dealing with the self-inflicted. I would think this would be especially vexing for modern doctors, with their already full schedules and yet more patients needing real treatment and care.
This book is written in such a way that you don’t need to be a medical doctor to grasp the meaning of a scene or the importance of a certain diagnosis. The author does a good job of balancing the medical terms with lay person explanations. I feel the book is accessible to a wide range of folks with minimal medical knowledge.
The pacing of the book is good, moving back and forth between the serious and deadly to the humorous and back again. It was like sitting down for a tea or beer with the author and having a good long chat about all the weird stuff he had seen during his long career. Definitely worth the read!
Narration: James Kiser was a good pick for this audiobook. He had a clear, and conversational, voice throughout the book. He never stumbled over the medical terms. During the few times where emotion was called for, he imbued the performance with it (awe, seriousness, humor, etc.).
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2 people found this helpful
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- Barry Jones
- 02-14-15
Fascinating medical mysteries
Now why did a disease only strike male golfers? And only those with high handicaps. How did a missionary couple come down with a STD? And what did an amorous girl do to make her boy friend's chest crackle. And how about the woman who had butterfly shaped bruises on her body, everywhere except between her shoulder blades. You'll find the answers, and the answers to many other puzzles,in this well written series of medical mysteries. The narration is also crisp and clear and well-paced. I thoroughly recommend this audio book. Barry Jones
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2 people found this helpful
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- Crystal
- 02-03-19
Dissonant transitions
Idk who decided to use the music between chapters, but it was a ridiculous mismatch to the subject material. All I could think was "jazz hands" after each chapter, and when so many referred to the deaths of some patients or, in one, the return of a homeless family to their usual haunt along the shore of a river, to follow with the upbeat jazz-like music was jarring.
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- ann johansson
- 05-20-17
Riveting!
Riveting! As a keen diagnostician, I was on the edge of my seat. (The plural of diagnosis is diagnoses, not diagnosises)
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- connie
- 05-16-16
What the heck
This was blasé and a knock off of others. The painful thing was not just narrator but the screeching, awful noise between chapters was so poorly thought out. Listening quietly to a (boring) book and SCREECH, screech, Screech. Save time and money.
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- Kendra Suzanne Ford
- 05-03-15
Unbearable listening
Interesting cases, audio is so annoying that I couldn't get past 2 stories. I should have listened to the sample first.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tsachi
- 03-07-15
boring
50 year old boring "mystery" medical stories... no mystery and no interest, just dull stories
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2 people found this helpful
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- Earl
- 04-28-24
Irritating bell sound at the end of each story.
Stories ok but the bell or buzzer sound at the end of each story was a real turn off.
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