Showing titles in History & Commentary

These outspoken writings by the founder of modern nursing record fundamentals in the needs of the sick that must be provided in all nursing. Nightingale covers such timeless topics as ventilation, noise, food, bed and bedding, light, cleanliness, and observation of the sick.

magine a healthcare system that thrives and listens, instead of dismisses. Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan believes such a healthcare system can exist, and using her experience as doctor, researcher, and patient, she gives her prescription for change, showing what can happen if we just listen. In Unheard, Dr Dhairyawan takes us on a journey through history to show how not listening to patients has been ingrained in the story of medicine.

Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.

For two thousand years, cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.

Longlisted for the Andrew 2024 Carnegie Medal for Non-Fiction The shocking, never-before-told story of America’s thalidomide victims In Germany on Christmas Day 1956 a baby girl was born without ears. She was the first victim of the notorious thalidomide epidemic. There would be over 10,000...

This is a tale of pursuit through the kitchens of New York City at the turn of the century. By the late nineteenth century, it seemed that New York City had put an end to the outbreaks of typhoid fever that had so frequently decimated the city's population. That is until 1904, when the disease broke out in a household in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Authorities suspected the family cook, Mary Mallon, of being a carrier. But before she could be tested, the woman, soon to be known as Typhoid Mary, had disappeared.

In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z's mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not stopped the trend. What has gone wrong with our youth? In Bad Therapy, bestselling investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the problem isn't the kids - it's the mental health experts.

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book.

THE NEW BOOK FROM ELINOR CLEGHORN: A WOMAN'S WORK IS OUT NOW 'An essential history' - Leah Hazard 'Powerful' NEW YORK TIMES 'A passionate and indignant history' THE TIMES 'Unputdownable' TELEGRAPH Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. Over centuries, women's bodies have been...

Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris, read by Sam Woolf. In The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to...

**Narrated by Mandy Matney** The highly anticipated inside look at the collapse of the Murdaugh dynasty by the celebrated investigative journalist and creator of the #1 hit Murdaugh Murders Podcast, Mandy Matney. Years before the name Alex Murdaugh was splashed across every major media outlet in...

In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including Rome itself. This fast-spreading disease, known now as the Antonine plague, may have been history’s first pandemic. Soon after its arrival, the Empire began its downward trajectory toward decline and fall.

Read by the author, Dr Zachary Rubin. Understand your allergies and discover easy ways to feel better every day. "The clear, compassionate and evidence-based guide we've all been waiting for' - Dr. Mary Claire Haver, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The New Menopause From viral social...

The son of a country doctor, Sinclair Lewis turned to writing instead of medicine. He won the Nobel Prize in 1930. Arrowsmith was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. This is the story of a brilliant young man who dedicates his life to science, yet finds that corruption, not disease, is...

When we imagine Renaissance medicine, the cliché is dreadful–unsterile instruments, a total lack of anaesthetics and shocking levels of infant and maternal mortality. And that’s before you get into astrology, bloodletting and a litany of bizarre ‘treatments’, more likely to kill than cure… As ever, the true picture is somewhat different. Here, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern medicine began to take shape.

Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences, including the deadly Chicago heatwave of 1995, treating the first AIDS patients in the country before the disease was diagnosed, the nurse with rare Munchausen syndrome, the only surviving ricin victim, and the professor with Alzheimer's hiding the effects of the wrong medication.

Brought to you by Penguin. A pioneering study into how we interpret faces and what they reveal about us, from a world-renowned cultural historian What’s in a face? The face is one of our quintessential features and is the only part of the body where all the senses come together: smell, taste...

Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War examines how intoxicants have been put to the service of states, empires, and their armies throughout history. Since the beginning of organized combat, armed forces have prescribed drugs to their members for two general purposes: to enhance performance during combat and to counter the trauma of killing and witnessing violence after it is over.

In The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research, celebrated medievalist Dorsey Armstrong shares the fascinating new story of this old pandemic—revealed by dedicated researchers working with 21st-century technologies and a knowledge of language and history that now provide input from all geographic areas of the medieval world. In seven engaging lectures, Professor Armstrong corrects explanations of the pandemic that are now known to be inaccurate and offers a more robust description of plague biology than has ever been known.