Showing titles in History & Commentary

Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be "conquered" ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion.

When Joanne Jacobson’s writing about her mother’s respiratory illness was interrupted by her own diagnosis with a rare blood disorder, she found her perspective profoundly altered. Every Last Breath follows these two chronic illnesses as they grow unexpectedly intertwined. Rejecting a fixed, retrospective point of view and the forward-moving trajectory of conventional memoir, Jacobson brings the reader to the emotionally raw present - where potentially fatal illness and “end of life” both remain, emphatically, life.

In 1918, the world faced the deadliest pandemic in human history. What can the story of the so-called Spanish Flu teach us about the fight against present day crises and how to prepare for future outbreaks? At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 months than AIDS killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.

Revolutionary Surgeons offers an integrated picture of surgeons as political and military leaders of the American Revolution.

From the chaos of a psychiatric ER to the bowels of a maximum security prison, the stories range from bizarre to poignant and the people from noble to callous. Bedlam's Door depicts the challenges mental illness poses for patients, families, and health-care professionals and offers hope for the future. Like the case histories in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, it shows that though every person's story is unique, we are all more alike than different and are linked by our shared human experience.

In this book, veteran constitutional lawyer Jonathan W. Emord explains the intellectual origins of freedom of speech from the Age of Enlightenment to the founding of the American republic. Today, government censorship of health information worldwide relies on the same mechanisms of prior restraint that were used in Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

Post-traumatic stress disorder was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the latter part of the 19th century. In PTSD, Allan V. Horwitz traces the fluctuations in definitions of and responses to traumatic psychic conditions. Arguing that PTSD, perhaps more than any other diagnostic category, is a lens for showing major historical changes in conceptions of mental illness, he surveys the conditions most likely to produce traumas, the results of those traumas, and how to evaluate the claims of trauma victims.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant health emergency of our time. Writing from Italy in lockdown, physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world.

Ana Martos, en Breve Historia del condón y los métodos anticonceptivos, nos descubre, en un estilo ágil pero con absoluto rigor científico, no sólo la historia de los distintos medios para el control de la natalidad, sino las distintas posiciones que, desde la filosofía y la religión principalmente, se han opuesto a dichos medios.

Hippocrates revolutionized the study of medicine in Ancient Greece, but some of his ideas still influence the medical field today. In his book On Ulcers, Hippocrates details the recommended treatment for this ailment. While modern medicine has moved beyond using honey, boiled leaves, and white wine to treat ulcers, Hippocrates’ advice on diet and rest hold true. This text is fascinating for anyone interested in the historical development of medical practices.

O século XIX trouxe avanços tecnológicos e industriais em diversas áreas. Uma, porém, ficou para trás: a Medicina. Ao redor do planeta, a mortalidade infantil alcançava taxas altíssimas e a expectativa de vida era baixa. Doenças diversas castigavam a população. Mas o cenário mudou ao longo do século XX. Este audiolivro narra, de forma deliciosa, como médicos e cientistas lançavam mão de criatividade, coragem e raciocínio lógico para tornar os progressos possíveis.

For readers and listeners of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Henry Marsh, a riveting, gorgeously written biography of one of history's most fascinating and confounding diseases - Alzheimer's - from its discovery more than 100 years ago to today's race toward a cure.

Dr. Lange graduated from medical school in 1981, right as a new plague swept across the globe. His story became intertwined with the story of HIV. At once a physician, scientist, AIDS activist, and medical diplomat, Lange studied ways to battle HIV and prevent its spread from mother to child. Fighting the injustices of poverty, Lange advocated for better access to health care for the poor and the vulnerable. The Impatient Dr. Lange is the story of one man's struggle against a global pandemic - and the tragic attack that may have slowed down the search for a cure.

Investigative journalist Zuckerman takes us inside the top-secret laboratories, corporate clashes and high-stakes government negotiations that led to effective shots. Deeply reported and endlessly gripping, this is a dazzling blow-by-blow chronicle of the most consequential scientific breakthrough of our time. It's a story of courage, genius and heroism. It's also a tale of heated rivalries, unbridled ambitions, crippling insecurities and unexpected drama. A Shot to Save the World is the story of how science saved the world.

this exciting story illuminates the captivating world of the late Renaissance - in this case its plagues, remedies, and alchemy - through the life of Leonardo Fioravanti, a brilliant, remarkably forward-thinking, and utterly unconventional doctor. Fioravanti's marvelous cures and talent for self-aggrandizement earned him the adoration of the people, the scorn of the medical establishment, and a reputation as one of the age's most colorful, combative figures.

A crucial component of anti-Black racism is the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans. Sickening examines this institutionalized inequality through dramatic, concrete events from the past two decades, revealing how unequal living conditions and inadequate medical care have become routine. From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis, author Anne Pollock takes listeners on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare.

How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands? What is it like to cut into someone else's body? What is it like to stand by, powerless, while someone dies because of the incompetence of your seniors? How do you tell a beautiful young man who seems perfectly fit that he has only a few days left to live? Gabriel Weston worked in the big-city hospitals of the 21st century; a woman in a place dominated by Alpha males. Her world was one of disease, suffering and extraordinary pressure where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment were necessary tools for survival.

Is it smart to skip your annual physical? Should you put your trust in medical research? Is "low T" an actual disease? This book will examine these questions and more you've always wondered about in a collection of 50 essays on the medicine. The Doctor Will See You Now is a quirky and eclectic collection of short essays that explore evolving patient-physician relationship and reporting on medicine; famous doctors and notorious patients; surprising hospital practices and the future of healthcare; medical research, ethics, drugs, and money; and the brave new world of neurology.

Causes of death have changed irrevocably across time. In the course of a few centuries we have gone from a world where disease or violence were likely to strike anyone at any age and where famine could be just one bad harvest away, to one where excess food is more of a problem than a lack of it. Why is this? This Mortal Coil explains why we died in the past, the reasons we die now and how causes of death are about to profoundly change.

The Healing Cell is an easy to follow, carefully researched, and clear-eyed view of medicine many decades in the making that is now paying off with treatments that repair damaged hearts, restore sight, kill cancer, cure diabetes, heal burns, and stop the march of such degenerative diseases. The emotionally and intellectually stimulating stories throughout the audiobook dramatically illustrate that stem cell therapies can change the way we live our lives after being afflicted by a disease or trauma.