Showing titles in History & Commentary

In Change Is Possible, public health legend William H. Foege and five coauthors chronicle the failures and successes of global health through the modern age, including the massive impacts of colonialism, religious groups, philanthropies, politics, NGOs, and more. Foege, who has served in local, national, and international public health contexts is uniquely qualified to reflect on the history of global health. He and his Rollins School of Public Health coauthors explain why colonialism has been the greatest disaster for global health, whereas military medicine may have been its greatest asset.

In Chasing the Intact Mind, Lutz traces the history of the intact mind concept, explaining how it influences current policy and practice affecting those with autism.

Este volumen reúne los ensayos, La enfermedad y sus metáforas y El sida y sus metáforas, que siguen ejerciendo una influencia enorme en la reflexión médica y en las vidas de miles de pacientes y cuidadores.

Com a precisão de um biólogo, a visão de um historiador e a paixão de um biógrafo, o oncologista Siddhartha Mukherjee traça uma biografia detalhada do câncer, do primeiro registro às mais avançadas pesquisas, últimas descobertas e expectativas para o futuro, abrindo caminho para a desmitificação dessa doença tão temida.

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.

ONE OF TIME 100'S MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2024 A DEBUTIFUL BEST BOOK OF 2024 FEATURED IN NYLON W MAGAZINE GLAMOUR BOOK RIOT HEYALMA BUSTLE ELECTRIC LITERATURE ROMPER AND MORE! ""Tender, funny, angry, and sharp as hell. This is an essential book for anyone with...

“A fascinating look into the strange and sometimes unbelievable history of hypothermic medicine. Jaekl weaves together a story that is part history lesson and part science thriller. This is truly a must-read for any fan of science and science fiction!” —Douglas Talk, MD/MPH, chief medical...

¿Qué pasa cuando se traumatiza un cerebro joven? ¿Cómo afecta la mente de un niño el terror, el abuso o la desgracia? El psiquiatra infantil Bruce Perry ha ayudado a muchos a superar horrores inimaginables: niños supervivientes de genocidios o testigos de homicidio, adolescentes secuestrados o víctimas de violencia familiar. Mediante la observación del trauma a través de la lente científica, Perry nos revela la asombrosa capacidad del cerebro para curarse.

In the mid 1980s, Canada's worst public health disaster was unfolding. Catastrophic mismanagement of the country's blood supply allowed contaminated blood to be knowingly distributed, infecting close to two thousand Canadians with HIV. Among them was Melanie Brooks's surgeon father who, after receiving a blood transfusion during open-heart surgery in 1985, learned he was HIV positive. At a time when HIV/AIDS was misunderstood and public perception was shaped by fear, prejudice, and homophobia, victims of the disease faced ostracism and persecution. Wanting to protect his family from this stigma, Melanie's father decided his illness would be a secret they'd all keep.

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century’s worth of nude “posture” photos of college students. In this riveting history, Beth Linker tells why these photos were only a small part of the incredible story of twentieth-century America’s largely forgotten posture panic—a decades-long episode in which it was widely accepted as scientific fact that Americans were suffering from an epidemic of bad posture, with potentially catastrophic health consequences.

A pediatrician and infectious disease specialist warns of the resurgence of measles, the antivaccine movement, and how we can prepare for the next pandemic Every single child diagnosed with measles represents a system failure—an inexcusable unforced error. The technology to prevent essentially...

In January 2020, leading epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse learned of a new virus taking hold in China. He immediately foresaw a hard road ahead for the entire world, and emailed the Chief Medical Officer of Scotland warning that the UK should urgently begin preparations. A few days later he received a polite reply stating only that everything was under control.

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country - and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism," it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.

In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names - and opened their pocketbooks - in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?

In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as US Army nurses. For more than half a century these women's experiences remained untold, almost without reference in books, historical societies, or military archives. After years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews, Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee have created a dramatic narrative that at last brings to light the critical role that women played throughout the war.

Long before the U.S. government began conducting secret radiation and germ-warfare experiments, and long before the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, medical professionals had introduced—and hotly debated the ethics of—the use of human subjects in medical experiments. In Subjected to Science, Susan Lederer provides the first full-length history of biomedical research with human subjects in the earlier period, from 1890 to 1940.

Martin Arrowsmith is fascinated by science and medicine. As a boy, he immerses himself in Gray’s Anatomy. In medical school, he soaks up knowledge from his mentor, a renowned bacteriologist. But soon he is urged to focus on politics and promotions rather than his research. Even as Martin progresses from doctor to public health official and noted pathologist, he still yearns to devote his time to pure science.

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.

In this revelatory study, neuroscientist Helen Pilcher explores the hidden impact of the "nocebo effect"—the placebo's evil twin. Medical studies have proven the nocebo effect to cause pain, nausea, paralysis, seizures, and even blindness. The nocebo effect impacts how we grow sick and grow old, explains why people who don't have food allergies have dietary intolerances, and why adults and teenagers are equally susceptible to catching tics through social media.