REPORTS OF THEIR DEMISE


William Peter Grasso - 2021
    

Can Medicine Be Cured?: The Corruption of a Profession


Seamus O'Mahony - 2019
     'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday. 'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times. 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.

The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump: John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera


Sandra Hempel - 2006
    A killer with little respect for class or wealth, cholera ravaged the squalid streets of Soho and rocked the great centers of Victorian power. In this gripping book, Sandra Hempel tells the story of John Snow, a reclusive doctor without money or social position, who—alone and unrecognized—had the genius to look beyond the conventional wisdom of his day and uncover the truth behind the pandemic. She describes how Snow discovered that cholera was spread through drinking water and how this subsequently laid the foundations for the modern, scientific investigation of today's fatal plagues. A dramatic account with a colorful cast of characters, The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump features diversions into fascinating facets of medical and social history, such as Snow's tending of Queen Victoria in childbirth, Dutch microbiologist Leeuwenhoek's deliberate breeding of lice in his socks, Dickensian children's farms, and riotous nineteenth-century anesthesia parties. An afterword discusses the new threat of infectious diseases—including malaria, yellow fever, and cholera—with today's global warming. Copub: Granta

The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle


Eric Lax - 2004
    But it took a team of Oxford scientists headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain four more years to develop it as the first antibiotic, and the most important family of drugs in the twentieth century. At once the world was transformed—major bacterial scourges such as blood poisoning and pneumonia, scarlet fever and diphtheria, gonorrhea and syphilis were defeated as penicillin helped to foster not only a medical revolution but a sexual one as well. In his wonderfully engaging book, acclaimed author Eric Lax tells the real story behind the discovery and why it took so long to develop the drug. He reveals the reasons why credit for penicillin was misplaced, and why this astonishing achievement garnered a Nobel Prize but no financial rewards for Alexander Fleming, Florey, and his team. The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat is the compelling story of the passage of medicine from one era to the next and of the eccentric individuals whose participation in this extraordinary accomplishment has, until now, remained largely unknown.

Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver


Arthur Allen - 2007
    Arthur Allen reveals a history of vaccination that is both illuminated with hope and shrouded by controversy - covering Jenner's discovery to Pasteur's vaccines for rabies and cholera, to those that safeguarded the children of the 20th century.

Jesse Ventura's Marijuana Manifesto: How Lies, Corruption, and Propaganda Kept Cannabis Illegal


Jesse Ventura - 2016
    Now, more than ever before, our country needs to see full legalization of medical/recreational marijuana and hemp. Any way you look at it, for whoever is using it, marijuana is a medicinal plant, in abundant supply. Every month and every year that goes by, we find out more positive things about it. Medicinal marijuana has been demonized through the years but obviously this plant has a great deal of positive attributes, and it’s also a renewable resource. Being a cash crop, marijuana is bad for the pharmaceutical industry. Is Big Pharma pressuring the government to continue to deny sick people access? If so, that’s truly a crime against American citizens. And as Ventura writes: “Our government won’t do the right thing and legalize marijuana unless we the people demand it, because there are so many people within our government on the payroll, all thanks to the War on Drugs." Jesse Ventura’s Marijuana Manifesto calls for an end to the War on Drugs. Just because something is illegal, that doesn’t mean it goes away, it just means that criminals run it. Legalizing marijuana and marijuana dispensaries will serve to rejuvenate our pathetic economy, and just might make people a little happier. Ventura’s book will show us all how we can take our country back.

History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction


Jacalyn Duffin - 1999
    Organized conceptually around the major fields of medical endeavour - anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, surgery, obstetrics, psychiatry, pediatrics, and family medicine - this book is an accessible overview of medical history as a vibrant component of social, intellectual, and cultural history, and as a research discipline in its own right.Each chapter begins in antiquity and ends in the twentieth century. Throughout, Duffin shows that alternative interpretations can be found for most elements of our past and that topics of interest can go well beyond 'great men' and 'great discoveries' to include ideas, diseases, patients, institutions, and great mistakes. This approach does not mean that the 'great men' (and women) are neglected; rather they appear in context. Medical disasters such as chloramphenicol and thalidomide, are covered along with the triumphs, and examples from Canada's past, largely ignored in other medical histories, are included. A chapter on methodology, suggestions for further reading with special attention to Canadian sources, and a careful index make it possible to research a specific event or historical debate, or to satisfy a more general curiosity.By presenting the material in a structure that resonates with the broad outlines of medical training, and by focusing on the questions asked most often, this text is a relevant guide for students to the history of the profession they are about to embrace, and for those who would teach them, be they physicians or historians. Duffin's clear and entertaining prose and the many illustrations will help to demystify medicine for general readers and for students in other domains, such as history, philosophy, and sociology.

The Great Sioux War: A History from Beginning to End (Native American History)


Hourly History - 2020
    The war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers, countless Indian warriors, women and children, and the end of a way of life. This book tells the story of the Great Sioux War in full.Discover a plethora of topics such asThe Pacification of a NationFiasco at Powder RiverBloodshed at the Little BighornCuster’s Last StandThe Starving SummerThe Last Sun DanceAnd much more!

The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease


Charles Kenny - 2021
    Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion—quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles—resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world. However, our development has lately become precarious. Climate and population fluctuations and aspects of our prosperity such as global trade have left us more vulnerable than ever to newly emerging plagues. Greater global cooperation toward sustainable health is urgently required—such as the international efforts to harvest a Covid-19 vaccine—with millions of lives and trillions of dollars at stake. Written as colorful history, The Plague Cycle reveals the relationship between civilization, globalization, prosperity, and infectious disease over the past five millennia. It harnesses history, economics, and public health, and charts humanity’s remarkable progress, providing a fascinating and timely look at the cyclical nature of infectious disease.

As if it were yesterday: An old fat man remembers his youth as a Marine in Vietnam


Lee Suydam - 2017
    I try to tell what it was like for me and my brother Marines without fanfare or bravado and give the reader a vivid description of my 13 months.

Impress The World With Your Body in SEVEN DAYS!


David Madow - 2012
    Do you ever stop to wonder why some people look so good and others simply look terrible? It took Dr. Madow more than thirty years to figure it out, but he can now teach you the answer in seven days! "IMPRESS THE WORLD WITH YOUR BODY IN SEVEN DAYS" is serious stuff that anyone can read and put into practice immediately. There is no question that the readers of "IMPRESS THE WORLD WITH YOUR BODY IN SEVEN DAYS" will be thrilled with the changes that they will see with themselves in a very short time. And unlike other books that make promises (but either don't work or don't last), the "SEVEN DAYS" lifestyle will stick with you forever!

Prisoner in the mud: A young German's diary from 1945


Herwarth Metzel - 2020
    The front lines are collapsing all around, bombs are falling. On Thuringia too, a state in the centre-east of Germany. The Second World War is nearing its end. Boys of fifteen and sixteen from the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth movements set off in the belief that they can still save the fatherland – they are determined to defend it, bravely and loyally. Inadequately armed, however, they are forced to retreat from the advancing enemy in an entirely pointless march. They are taken prisoner and transferred to one of the infamous camps near Bad Kreuznach. Conditions in the camp are tough. The diarist is fortunate enough to survive and to be released relatively early, at the end of June 1945. Germany, spring 2005. The fatherland too has survived and has been reunified. It is a year of commemoration days, of monuments and memorials, and in the run-up to the sixtieth anniversary it is already being declared by all the media as a year of remembrance of the downfall of the ‘Third Reich’. Inspired by this, the diarist, now seventy-five years old, remembers the notes and diary entries kept at that time by his fifteen-year-old self. Originally written on scraps of toilet paper, he copied them out after his fortunate return in July 1945, and has not looked at them since. The notes are very personal and honest and, above all, authentic. They give an insight into the experiences and the thoughts of a young boy who by his own admission left as a ‘proud soldier’ and returned home as a ‘pitiful vagabond’. It is a historical document. It is not the story of an individual fate. Thousands had the same experiences. That is why the diarist decided, with some hesitation, to publish his diary as a part of the historical truth, even if there already existed numerous reports and publications about the camps in Bad Kreuznach, Bretzenheim, Dietersheim, Bingen, Heidesheim and the other ‘Rhine Meadows camps’. All these records are testament to the fact that tyranny often abounds when one group of people is given unchecked power over another. According to Livy, as many as 2400 years ago the Gaulish king Brennus called to the defeated Romans: ‘Vae victis!’ – woe to the vanquished! Herwarth Metzel

Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital, and the great Southwest in the days of the wild Indian, the buffalo, the cowboy, dance halls, gambling halls and bad men (1913)


Robert Marr Wright - 1975
     With all that has been said about Dodge City no true account of conditions as they were in the early days was accessible until publication of Robert Wright's 1911 book "Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital." The author was especially well qualified to write a history of the "wicked city of the plains" since he had lived on the frontier for many years previous to the founding of the city and lived in the city from its opening. He had all the experience gleaned as a plainsman, explorer, scout, trader and as mayor of the town. His is a most interesting narrative of early days, as well as a very valuable contribution to western history. Prior to founding Dodge City in 1868, at 16 years old Wright came West to Missouri. In 1859 he made the first of six overland trips across the plains to Denver. He was later appointed post trader at Fort Dodge in 1867, when Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Prairie Apache abounded there. Wright was acquainted with old-school Western sheriff and gunfighter Bat Masterson, of whom he said, "Bat is a gentleman by instinct. He is a man of pleasant manners, good address and mild disposition, until aroused, and then, for God's sake, look out! "Bat was a most loyal man to his friends. If anyone did him a favor, he never forgot it. I believe that if one of his friends was confined in jail and there was the least doubt of his innocence, he would take a crow-bar and 'jimmy' and dig him out, at the dead hour of midnight; and, if there were determined men guarding him, he would take these desperate chances...." Wright describes a typical day in Dodge: "Someone ran by my store at full speed, crying out, 'Our marshal is being murdered in the dance hall!' I, with several others, quickly ran to the dance hall and burst in the door. The house was so dense with smoke from the pistols a person could hardly see, but Ed Masterson had corralled a lot in one corner of the hall, with his sixshooter in his left hand, holding them there until assistance could reach him...." Wright also describes one hair-raising encounter he witnessed from a roof on his ranch: "The savages circled around the poor Mexican again and again; charged him from the front and rear and on both sides. Presently the poor fellow's horse went down, and he lay behind it for awhile. Then he cut the girth, took off the saddle, and started for the river, running at every possible chance, using the saddle as a shield, stopping to show fight only when the savages pressed him too closely

SHARK AMONG THE MINNOWS: BOOK ONE OF THE HUNTER/KILLER SERIES (HUNTER/KILLER SERIES OF THE FIGHTING TOMCATS 1)


M.L. Maki - 2019
    He, and the 128 men on board, depart their home port of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on a six-month deployment as part of the USS Carl Vinson battlegroup. The San Francisco, SSN-711, is the state-of-the-art in submarine technology of the U.S. Navy. The Akula class submarine Kasholot, K-322, is the state-of-the-art submarine of the Russian Navy. These two ships, commanded by very different men, are destined to hunt each other in the Cold War game until a science experiment gone wrong takes them back in time to December 19, 1941, and the beginning of World War II.

The Battle of Panchavati and Other Stories from Indian Scriptures


Divya Narain Upadhyaya - 2019
    These are the stories most of us have grown up with. The book is an attempt to revisit these timeless stories in a new rendition to make them more acceptable and interesting to the modern reader. This collection of seven timeless classics is an ideal companion of the traveller, the vacationer or even the casual reader. About Author : Divya Narain Upadhyaya is a medical doctor and a Plastic Surgeon by profession. He works in the Department of Plastic Surgery, at King Georges' Medical University, Lucknow, as an Associate Professor. His fields of interest in medicine are cleft and craniofacial surgery and treating brachial plexus injuries. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and has trained extensively in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery from the United States and Switzerland. He is an International Fellow of the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeon and also an AO-CMF Fellow. His primary literary interests lie in Indian scriptures, religion and Indian history. He has a blog on dnu1blog.com where he writes about a variety of topics. This is his first book.