Showing titles in History & Commentary

Stuart Jamieson's story is the story of four decades of advances in heart surgery. Taut, elegantly crafted, and ever-attentive to the patients for whom he was the last best chance, Close to the Sun is an adventurous, riveting account based on the experience of over 40,000 heart surgeries, where everything was on the line every moment in the O.R.

Don't take speech for granted. Kit Roberts Johnson knows what it is like to have a frozen voice. She knows what it is like for others to have their voices silenced, like children with Down Syndrome, or adults with stuttering. She became a speech therapist to help people with communication disorders and discovered over the span of her career that we have all been silenced in some way.

In medical charts, the term "N.A.D." (No Apparent Distress) is used for patients who appear stable. The phrase also aptly describes America's medical system when it comes to treating the underprivileged. Medical students learn on the bodies of the poor - and the poor suffer from their mistakes. Rachel Pearson confronted these harsh realities when she started medical school in Galveston, Texas.

Again and again, microbes have shaped our health, our genetics, our history, our culture, our politics, even our religion and ethics. This book reveals much that scientists and cultural historians have learned about the pervasive interconnections between infectious microbes and humans. It also considers what our ongoing fundamental relationship with infectious microbes might mean for the future of the human species.

IQ scores have the power to determine the chances we have in life: the people we meet, the schools we attend, the jobs we get, the lives we live. Very few of us, however, understand what IQ tests and ratings really mean. In this fascinating, provocative book, Stephen Murdoch explains the turbulent history and controversial current uses of intelligence testing.

For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin - a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed 10 million lives worldwide.  

No Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Barbacena, conhecido apenas por Colônia, ocorreu uma das maiores barbáries da história do Brasil. O centro recebia diariamente, além de pacientes com diagnóstico de doença mental, homossexuais, prostitutas, epiléticos, mães solteiras, meninas problemáticas, mulheres engravidadas pelos patrões, moças que haviam perdido a virgindade antes do casamento, mendigos, alcoólatras, melancólicos, tímidos e todo tipo de gente considerada fora dos padrões sociais.

Since 2010 it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this technological breakthrough there has emerged a movement to use this information to help prospective parents "eliminate preventable genetic disease." As the prospect of systematically excluding the appearance of unwanted mutations in our children comes within reach, David B. Goldstein examines the possible consequences from these types of choices.

Over the past two decades, we have started talking more about common mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. But complex conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and psychosis have been left behind, as have many of the people who live with these conditions or who care for them. Part memoir, part deep-dive investigation, The One Thing We've Never Spoken About is filled with rage at how our nation's public discourse, emergency services and healthcare systems continue to fail so many people.

Now more than 133 million Americans live with chronic illness, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all health care dollars, and untold pain and disability. There has been an alarming rise in illnesses that defy diagnosis through clinical tests or have no known cure. Millions of people, especially women, with illnesses such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain, and chronic fatigue syndrome face skepticism from physicians and the public alike.

In Demanding Compassion, Dr. William Scarlett pulls back the curtain on modern medicine—not the glossy version shown in marketing campaigns, but the reality lived by doctors, nurses, and patients every day. With candid honesty and deep conviction, Scarlett challenges both his colleagues and his patients to remember why medicine exists in the first place: to help people heal. This book is both a call to action and a blueprint for change. For burned-out physicians questioning why they ever chose this path, Scarlett offers a reminder of their purpose and the hope that change is possible.

When Jesus sent 70 disciples on ahead of him, part of their mission was to heal the sick. In fact, they were supposed to heal the sick before they preached the Gospel. Best-selling author Mike Aquilina calls this command the healing imperative. And it's an imperative that ushered in the world of modern medicine. In The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It, Aquilina reconstructs the fascinating history of a uniquely Christian institution: the hospital.

In the 16th century, when explorers travelled deep into the jungles of South America in search of gold and spices, they brought back many colourful tales of their adventures. None of these tales was more astonishing, or caused more concern, than that of the mystical properties of the substance with which the natives anointed their darts and arrows.

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large.

Christian W. McMillen provides a concise yet comprehensive account of pandemics throughout human history, illustrating how pandemic disease has shaped history and, at the same time, social behavior has influenced pandemic disease.

From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, the gripping, untold stories of three unsung Black physicians and their critical contributions to the field of medicine and American culture. Between 1847 and 1952, three New York City doctors transformed medicine...

“A mosaic mystery told in vignettes, cliffhangers, curious asides, and some surreal plot twists as Raffel investigates the secrets of the man who changed infant care in America.”—NPR, 2018's Great Reads What kind of doctor puts his patients on display? This is the spellbinding tale of a...

The epic history of how antibiotics were born, saving millions of lives and creating a vast new industry known as Big Pharma. As late as the 1930s, virtually no drug intended for sickness did any good; doctors could set bones, deliver babies, and offer palliative care. That all changed in less...

An inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of one doctor’s discovery of how hope can change the course of illness Since the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and...

An inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of one doctor’s discovery of how hope can change the course of illness Since the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and...