Showing titles in History & Commentary

Malária, sífilis, tuberculose, ebola, gripe, aids, sarampo e outros males que atacam a humanidade revelam muito mais da nossa história do que imaginamos. Os passos do homem ao longo das épocas, pelos continentes, o início da utilização de vestimentas, a convivência com diversos animais, o encontro com outros seres humanos: tudo isso pode ser desvendado agora com o estudo microscópico de vírus, bactérias e parasitas que cruzaram - e cruzam - o nosso caminho.

In medicine, every patient presents with a story. “Once upon a time I was well, and then . . . ” These patient narratives are the beating heart of medicine; through stories we strive to communicate, to understand, to empathize, and perhaps find healing. These Vital Signs is a poignant series of essays—deeply personal stories—inspired by nephrologist Sayed Tabatabai’s medical experience and based on a series of poems he posted on Twitter that began going viral at the height of the COVID pandemic.

In 1932, the US Public Health Service recruited 623 African American men from Macon County, Alabama, for a study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male". For the next 40 years - even after the development of penicillin, the cure for syphilis - these men were denied medical care for this potentially fatal disease.

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.

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.

Between August 1918 and March 1919, the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event. This edition includes a preface discussing the then-recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic.

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.

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.

Today, 90 percent of psychiatric beds are located in jails and prisons across the United States, institutions that confine disproportionate numbers of African Americans. After more than a decade of research, the celebrated scholar and activist Mab Segrest locates the deep historical roots of this startling fact, turning her sights on a long-forgotten cauldron of racial ideology: the state mental asylum system in which psychiatry was born and whose influences extend into our troubled present.

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are implanted with medical devices - like pacemakers, artificial hips, cardiac stents, etc. The overwhelming majority of high-risk implanted devices have never undergone a single clinical trial. The FDA lets device manufacturers decide whether to report serious complications or deaths that may have been caused by their products. Here, award-winning journalist Jeanne Lenzer brings these horrifying statistics to life through the story of one working-class man who, after his "cure" nearly kills him, ends up in a battle for justice.

The Battle Against COVID-19 Filipino American Healthcare Workers on the Frontlines of the Pandemic Response is a tribute to all health and essential workers who provide critical services to save lives. These frontliners have risked their lives during this pandemic and sadly, a significant number have succumbed to the deadly virus.

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.

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.

In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.

In The End of Epidemics, leading public health authority Dr Jonathan D. Quick tells the stories of the heroes, past and present, who’ve succeeded in their fights to stop the spread of illness and death. He explains the science and the politics of combating epidemics. And he provides a detailed seven-part plan showing exactly how world leaders, health professionals, the business community, media and ordinary citizens can work together to prevent epidemics, saving millions of lives.

Leading transplant surgeon Dr. Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, moving organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the stories of his own patients. Gripping and evocative, How Death Becomes Life takes us inside the operating room and presents the stark dilemmas that transplant surgeons must face daily.

This riveting audiobook takes the listener around the globe and through the centuries to discover how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain. With colorful stories and sometimes frightening anecdotes, Dr. Thomas Dormandy describes a checkered progression of breakthroughs, haphazard experiments, ignorant attitudes, and surprising developments in human efforts to control pain.

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.

For centuries, people have talked of a powerful bodily disorder called migraine, which currently affects about a billion people around the world. Yet until now, the rich history of this condition has barely been told. In Migraine, award-winning historian Katherine Foxhall reveals the ideas and methods that ordinary people and medical professionals have used to describe, explain, and treat migraine since the Middle Ages.