Showing titles in History & Commentary

The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease...yet we are still much more fearful of the epidemic. Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question - or the actual risks of contagion - but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in 19th-century Britain. It argues that it was in the 19th century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

Considerado uno de los grandes escritores clínicos del siglo, Oliver Sacks nos presenta en su último libro siete casos neurológicos que constituyen una profunda reflexión sobre la esencia de la identidad y los mecanismos del conocimiento. Un pintor que tras un accidente de coche deja de ver el color; un cirujano cuyos continuos tics y compulsiones sólo remiten cuando opera o pilota su aeroplano; un hombre que tras toda una vida de ceguera recupera la vista sólo para darse cuenta de que no sabe ver.

Discover the desired, yet elusive secret to eternal youth, as you plunge into the depths of humankind's relentless pursuit for longevity in "The Fountain of Youth." This entrancing eBook meticulously curates the history, evolution, and future prospects of anti-aging remedies, propelling readers through an enlightening journey in time, cultures, and diverse thought processes. Unravel the enigma of the timeless quest for longevity as the book carries you from the spell-binding first tales of age-defying elixirs in Chapter 2, to the anti-aging practices developed during the grandeur of the ...

Discover the evolution of mental health throughout the decades! Get a glimpse into how society viewed and treated those with mental illnesses. This book volume series is a must for anyone interested in the history of mental health. Download this volume and stay tuned for the next one!

The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorized and understood. A century on, their conceptions of mental illness continue to influence our views today. Beliefs and behavior were divided up into the pathological and the healthy. The influence of religion and the supernatural became significant measures of insanity in individuals, countries, and cultures. Troubled by Faith explores these ideas about the supernatural across society through the prism of medical history.

The 1918 Influenza pandemic moved around the world in three waves, infecting up to 500 million people and causing over 40 million deaths. In areas that ended the pandemic with lower mortality rates than average, several things tended to be present. These include low rates of poverty, widespread access to healthcare, well-funded and widespread public health measures, and well-managed record-keeping.

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.

A deadly virus spreads across the world, gun shots ring out during the night, racial unrest and riots occur. Kings County Hospital is one of the oldest and largest hospitals in the US. The centerpiece of Crown Heights Brooklyn, the County is where some of the sickest and most broken people are brought for their care after being shot, injured or stricken with the HIV virus.

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.

Since the world’s first test-tube baby was born in 1978, in vitro fertilization has made the unimaginable possible for millions of people, but its revolutionary potential remains unrealized. Today, fertility centers continue to reinforce conservative norms of motherhood and family, and infertility remains a deeply emotional experience many women are reluctant to discuss.

The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental wellbeing, and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self. Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system.

Mysterious and misunderstood, distorted by biblical imagery of disfigurement and uncleanness, Hansen's disease or leprosy has all but disappeared from America's consciousness. In Carville, Louisiana, the closed doors of the nation's last center for the treatment of leprosy open to reveal stories of sadness, separation, and even strength in the face of what was once a life-wrenching diagnosis. Drawn from interviews with living patients and extensive research in the leprosarium's archives, Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America tells the stories of former patients.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a GP before he became a writer. He uses his medical knowledge widely in the Sherlock Holmes stories. He bases the deductive skills of his hero detective on the diagnostic techniques a GP uses with a patient. He even gives Sherlock a GP sidekick. This all contributes to the enduring popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories, over 130 years after the first story was published.

Witness early, bloody, anaesthetic-free operations and first crude surgical instruments, trace the mapping of the circulatory system, follow the painstaking detective work that led to the decoding of the human genome and understand the role that potions, cures, therapies, herbal medicines and drugs have played in the human quest to tame and conquer disease, injury and death. An engrossing history and tale of drama and discovery that celebrates the milestones of medical history across generations and cultures.

The tale of the American volunteer ambulance drivers of the First World War is one of gallantry amid gore, manners amid madness. Until now this stirring example of wartime courage has been recounted only in fragments. Arlen J. Hansen's Gentlemen Volunteers brings to life the entire story of the men - and women - who formed the first ambulance corps, and who went on to redefine American culture.

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 antibiotics started to fail the race to save humanity from deadly antibiotic resistant infections began. Science journalist Lina Zeldovich reveals the remarkable history of bacteriophages or 'phages', through the colourful lives of the British, French, Soviet and American scientists who discovered, developed and are now reviving this unique living medicine for seemingly incurable diseases.

It’s the business of saving lives. Miracle Medicines goes behind the scenes of the pharmaceutical industry and into the high-security laboratories to tell the stories of the men and women - chemists, physiologists, medical and clinical researchers, engineers - who have chosen to toil for years in the lab in order to transform scientific theories into new lifesaving medicines. You’ll witness the day-to-day labors, victories and defeats of the dedicated professionals who are waging a war against the diseases that still plague mankind.

Long-time physician Sherwin B. Nuland presents a provocative and stimulating collection of stories illustrating the vagaries of medical practice over the years.