In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, while in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass.What these strange conditions–including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease–share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes go wrong, resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNA–and the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world.In The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prion’s hidden past and deadly future

    Over 500 clinical photographs and diagrams now illustrate the text, whilst new topics have been added to make the book even more comprehensive. A complementary DVD now accompanies the book, with specially-recorded videos demonstrating many of the clinical examination routines as they are described in the main text. The book is written by a team of editors and contributors who are all active clinicians and experts in their specialist fields, including in general practice where much of clinical teaching is now based. It describes the practical skills which every clinician must acquire and develop in order to evolve diagnostic procedures and management strategies and plans.

    Kelly A. Turner, founder of the Radical Remission Project, uncovers nine factors that can lead to a spontaneous remission from cancer—even after conventional medicine has failed.While getting her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkley, Dr. Turner, a researcher, lecturer, and counselor in integrative oncology, was shocked to discover that no one was studying episodes of radical (or unexpected) remission—when people recover against all odds without the help of conventional medicine, or after conventional medicine has failed.  She was so fascinated by this kind of remission that she embarked on a ten month trip around the world, traveling to ten different countries to interview fifty holistic healers and twenty radical remission cancer survivors about their healing practices and techniques. Her research continued by interviewing over 100 Radical Remission survivors and studying over 1000 of these cases.  Her evidence presents nine common themes that she believes may help even terminal patients turn their lives around.

    Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman’s documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

    When an epidemic hits, the EIS will be there to crack the case, however mysterious or deadly, saving countless lives in the process. Over the years they have successfully battled polio, cholera, and smallpox, to name a few, and in recent years have turned to the epidemics killing us now--smoking, obesity, and gun violence among them.The successful EIS model has spread internationally: former EIS officers on the staff of the Centers for Disease Control have helped to establish nearly thirty similar programs around the world. EIS veterans have gone on to become leaders in the world of public health in organizations such as the World Health Organization."Inside the Outbreaks" takes readers on a riveting journey through the history of this remarkable organization, following Epidemic Intelligence Service officers on their globetrotting quest to eliminate the most lethal and widespread threats to the world's health.

    Robert Marion asked three of them to keep a careful diary over the course of a year. Andy, Mark, and Amy vividly describe their real-life lessons in treating very sick children; confronting child abuse and the awful human impact of the AIDS epidemic; skirting the indifference of the hospital bureaucracy; and overcoming their own fears, insecurities, and constant fatigue. Their stories are harrowing and often funny; their personal triumph is unforgettable.This updated edition of The Intern Blues includes a new preface from the author discussing the status of medical training in America today and a new afterword updating the reader on the lives of the three young interns who first shared their stories with readers more than a decade ago.

    When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?From serial killer to natural disaster, 'perfect murder' to freak accident, Shepherd takes nothing for granted in pursuit of truth. And while he's been involved in some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, it's often the less well known encounters that prove the most perplexing, intriguing and even bizarre. In or out of the public eye, his evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.But a life in death, bearing witness to some of humanity's darkest corners, exacts a price and Shepherd doesn't flinch from counting the cost to him and his family.

    But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment.Challenging both the idea of the addict's "broken brain" and the notion of a simple "addictive personality," The New York Times Bestseller, Unbroken Brain, offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention and policy. Like autistic traits, addictive behaviors fall on a spectrum -- and they can be a normal response to an extreme situation. By illustrating what addiction is, and is not, the book illustrates how timing, history, family, peers, culture and chemicals come together to create both illness and recovery- and why there is no "addictive personality" or single treatment that works for all.Combining Maia Szalavitz's personal story with a distillation of more than 25 years of science and research, Unbroken Brain provides a paradigm-shifting approach to thinking about addiction.Her writings on radical addiction therapies have been featured in The Washington Post, Vice Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, in addition to multiple other publications. She has been interviewed about her book on many radio shows including Fresh Air with Terry Gross and The Brian Lehrer show.

    Terminology and complex medical processes are described in an easy-to-understand manner that is readily accessible to learners of all levels. The Language of Medicine brings medical terms to life with a text/workbook format organized by body systems, offering additional chapters on specific key areas of health care, such as cancer and psychiatry. Anatomy and physiology sections are generously illustrated in full color and reinforced with exercises on combining forms and word parts.

    This narrative, told through the stories and voices of the people caught in the deadly maelstrom, explores how this vast, global epidemic was intertwined with the horrors of World War I—and how it could happen again. Complete with photographs, period documents, modern research, and firsthand reports by medical professionals and survivors.

    A book for medical students and doctors.

    It also provides a straightforward but comprehensive treatment of VLSI design processes and design rules for students and all novice digital systems designers.

    In the new edition of Biochemistry, instructors will see the all the hallmark features that made this a consistent bestseller for the undergraduate biochemistry course: exceptional clarity and concision, a more biological focus, cutting-edge content, and an elegant, uncluttered design.  Accomplished in both the classroom and the laboratory, coauthors Jeremy Berg and John Tymoczko draw on the field's dynamic research to illustrate its fundamental ideas.

    Chapters parallel most standard pathology texts and each chapter ends with a review test. Topics covered include general and basic pathology, major concepts of disease processes, and systemic pathology surveying principal disorders of each organ system. A comprehensive examination at the end of the book contains 500 USMLE-format questions. USMLE questions have all been updated to current USMLE format.The text is written in outline format for effective review. Icons indicate high-yield information that correlates with key pathology concepts.

    This is my story as a patient through a doctor’s eyes with the hope that healthcare professionals will read it, in particular young doctors and medical students, and understand exactly what being a patient is really like and how their behaviours, no matter how small can impact massively on their patients. It is also a story of my own personal battles with control and learning how and when to relinquish it.