The Complete Poetry


John Milton - 1645
    The text is established from original sources, with collations of all known manuscripts, chronology and verbal variants recorded. Works in Latin, Greek and Italian are included with new literal translations.

The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity


Roy Porter - 1997
    . . alive and fascinating and provocative on every page."—Oliver Sacks, M.D.Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords readers the opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to humankind. "A splendid and thoroughly engrossing book."--"L.A. Times." of illustrations.

Maxims


François de La Rochefoucauld - 1665
    The philosophy of La Rochefoucauld, which influenced French intellectuals as diverse as Voltaire and the Jansenists, is captured here in more than 600 penetrating and pithy aphorisms.

A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology


Randy-Michael TestaWalt Whitman - 2002
    Organized around the central themes of altruism, knowledge, skill, and duty, the book includes contributions from well-known authors, doctors, nurses, practitioners, and patients. Provocative and moving pieces address what it means to care for a life in a century of unprecedented scientific advances, examining issues of hope and healing from both ends of the stethoscope.

Virus X


Frank Ryan - 1996
    But AIDS is just one of the many emerging viruses for which we have, as yet, no cure. Even the old plagues – TB, cholera, bubonic plague – are making a comeback, resistant now to our drugs.Frank Ryan, a leading authority on disease, describes the groundbreaking research of the world’s leading experts in the field to show both where these viruses come from and why they prove to be so lethal, and advances a radical new biological theory for the origins and behaviour of plague viruses. Full of vivid despatches from the front line of research and medicine, 'Virus X' is terrifying and essential reading for anyone interested in the effects of plague viruses on human evolution.“Extremely well written…Frank Ryan has the page-turning and spine-chilling ability of a good novelist”MATT RIDLEY, 'Sunday Telegraph'“Compelling and frightening…the plot could not be bettered”MICHAEL SMITH, 'Scotsman'“Ryan is very good at making technical matters comprehensible to the lay reader but more impressive still is the way he conveys the intellectual excitement and elation of scientific discovery”ANTHONY DANIELS, 'Literary Review'“Ryan takes us through the drama of discovery and challenges the notion that certain questions are too appalling to contemplate”DAVID BRADLEY, 'New Scientist'“Dr Ryan writes well in a difficult technical field, weaving the technicalities of scientific history, medicine, molecular biology and evolution into the human narratives…very readable and disturbing”JOHN R.G. TURNER, 'New York Times'

Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab


Christine Montross - 2007
    Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses in body bags is shocking no matter how long you've prepared yourself, but a strange thing happened when Montross met her cadaver. Instead of being disgusted by her, she was utterly intrigued-intrigued by the person the woman once was, humbled by the sacrifice she had made in donating her body to science, fascinated by the strange, unsettling beauty of the human form. They called her Eve. This is the story of Montross and Eve-the student and the subject-and the surprising relationship that grew between them. Body of Work is a mesmerizing, rarely seen glimpse into the day-to-day life of a medical student-yet one that follows naturally in the footsteps of recent highly successful literary renderings of the mysteries of medicine such as Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. Christine Montross was a poet long before she became a doctor and brings an uncommon perspective to the emotional difficulty of the first year of medical school-the dispiriting task of remaining clinical and detached while in the anatomy lab and the struggle with the line you've crossed by violating another's body once you leave it. Montross was so affected by her experience with Eve that she undertook to learn more about the history of cadavers and the study of anatomy. She visited an autopsy lab in Ireland and the University of Padua in Italy where Vesalius, a forefather of anatomy, once studied; she learned about body snatchers and grave-robbers and anatomists who practiced their work on live criminals. Her disturbing, often entertaining anecdotes enrich this exquisitely crafted memoir, endowing an eerie beauty to the world of a doctor-in-training. Body of Work is an unforgettable examination of the mysteries of the human body and a remarkable look at our relationship with both the living and the dead.

Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates


David Wootton - 2006
    Yet, David Wootton argues, from the fifth century BC until the 1930s, doctors actually did more harm than good. In this controversial new account of the history of medicine, he asks just how much good it has done us over the years, and how much harm it continues to do today.

Darwin


Charles Darwin - 1908
    As much as anyone in the modern era, he changed human thought, and his influence is still felt in virtually all aspects of our lives. This new edition, larger and more varied than the previous ones, includes more of Darwin's own work and also presents the most recent research and scholarship on all aspects of Darwin’s legacy. The biological sciences, as well as social thought, philosophy, ethics, religion, and literature, have all been shaped and reshaped by evolutionary concepts.Excerpts from the most important books and articles of recent years confirm this Darwinian heritage. New work by Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, Kevin Padian, Eugene C. Scott, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Michael Ruse, Frans de Waal, Noretta Koertge, George C. Williams, George Levine, Stephen Jay Gould, Gillian Beer, Ernst Mayr, and many others illuminates this exciting intellectual history. A wide-ranging new introduction by the editor provides context and coherence to this rich body of engaging material, much of which will be shaping human thought well into the new century.This collection of Darwin's writing, those of his critics and those of his intellectual descendants, includes:- The Voyage of the Beagle (1845): Ch. I, XVII- On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; And on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection (1858): Ch. I-II- An Historical Sketch of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species Previously to the Publication of this Work (1861) The Origin of Species (1859): Introduction, Ch. I-IV, VI, IX, XIII-XIV- The Descent of Man (1871): Introduction, Ch. I-III, VI, VIII, XIX-XXI

Twenty-Three Tales


Leo Tolstoy - 1907
    While inspired by the sense of spiritual certainty, their narrative quality, subtle humor, and visionary power lift them far above the common run of "religious" literature. Moralists purport to tell us what our lives should mean, and how we should live them. Tolstoy, on the other hand, has an uncanny gift for simply conveying what it means to be truly alive Tolstoy is one of the great masters of fiction--and of Christian fiction. And the stories you will find here are many of his best. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Gray's Anatomy


Henry Gray - 1858
    About The Author: Henry Gray, F.R.S., Fellow of the royal college of Surgeons: Lecturer on anatomy at St. George?s Hospital Medical School. Table Of Contents: Descriptive and Surgical Anatomy The Articulations Muscles and Fasclae The Blood-vascular system The Lymphatics The Nervous system The Organs of special sense The Organs of Digestion The Organs of voice and respiration The urinary organs The Male Organs of Generation The Female Organs of Generation The Surgical Anatomy of Hernia Surgical Anatomy of the Perinaeum General Anatomy or Histology Embryology

The Remarkable Life of the Skin: An Intimate Journey Across Our Largest Organ


Monty Lyman - 2020
    We see it, touch it, and live in it every day. It is a habitat for a mesmerizingly complex world of micro-organisms and physical functions that are vital to our health and our survival. It is also a waste removal plant, a warning system for underlying disease and a dynamic immune barrier to infection. One of the first things people see about us, skin is crucial to our sense of identity, providing us with social significance and psychological meaning. And yet our skin and the fascinating way it functions is largely unknown to us. In prose as lucid as his research underlying it is rigorous, blending in memorable stories from the past and from his own medical experience, Monty Lyman has written a revelatory book exploring our outer surface that will surprise and enlighten in equal measure. Through the lenses of science, sociology, and history--on topics as diverse as the mechanics and magic of touch (how much goes on in the simple act of taking keys out of a pocket and unlocking a door is astounding), the close connection between the skin and the gut, what happens instantly when one gets a paper cut, and how a midnight snack can lead to sunburn--Lyman leads us on a journey across our most underrated and unexplored organ and reveals how our skin is far stranger, more wondrous, and more complex than we have ever imagined.

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge


Jean-François Lyotard - 1979
    Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed. This book extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information is controlled in the Western world.

Essays on the Theory of Numbers


Richard Dedekind - 1901
    W. R. Dedekind. The first presents Dedekind's theory of the irrational number-the Dedekind cut idea-perhaps the most famous of several such theories created in the 19th century to give a precise meaning to irrational numbers, which had been used on an intuitive basis since Greek times. This paper provided a purely arithmetic and perfectly rigorous foundation for the irrational numbers and thereby a rigorous meaning of continuity in analysis.The second essay is an attempt to give a logical basis for transfinite numbers and properties of the natural numbers. It examines the notion of natural numbers, the distinction between finite and transfinite (infinite) whole numbers, and the logical validity of the type of proof called mathematical or complete induction.The contents of these essays belong to the foundations of mathematics and will be welcomed by those who are prepared to look into the somewhat subtle meanings of the elements of our number system. As a major work of an important mathematician, the book deserves a place in the personal library of every practicing mathematician and every teacher and historian of mathematics. Authorized translations by "Vooster " V. Beman.

Persian Letters


Montesquieu - 1721
    As they travel, they write home to wives and eunuchs in the harem and to friends in France and elsewhere. Their colourful observations on the culture differences between West and East culture conjure up Eastern sensuality, repression and cruelty in contrast to the freer, more civilized West - but here also unworthy nobles and bishops, frivolous women of fashion and conceited people of all kinds are satirized. Storytellers as well as letter-writers, Montesquieu's Usbek and Rica are disrespectful and witty, but also serious moralists. Persian Letters was a succès de scandale in Paris society, and encapsulates the libertarian, critical spirit of the early eighteenth century.

Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases


Paul A. Offit - 2007
    But Maurice Hilleman came close. Maurice Hilleman is the father of modern vaccines. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly deadly diseases — including mumps, rubella, and measles — nearly forgotten. Author Paul A. Offit's rich and lively narrative details Hilleman's research and experiences as the basis for a larger exploration of the development of vaccines, covering two hundred years of medical history and traveling across the globe in the process. The history of vaccines necessarily brings with it a cautionary message, as they have come under assault from those insisting they do more harm than good. Paul Offit clearly and compellingly rebuts these arguments, and, by demonstrating how much the work of Hilleman and others has gained for humanity, shows us how much we have to lose.