Critical: Science and stories from the brink of human life


Matt Morgan - 2019
    Michael Mosley'This book is marvellous: buy it, share it, recommend it.... We are fortunate to have dedicated, caring and humble folks such as Doc Morgan on the Critical Care front line. We are even better off when a writer can capture all that this exciting, mad, glorious and even exasperating job means. If you work in healthcare, know somebody that does, or simply inhabit a body then this book is for you: in fact it's critical.' Peter Brindley, Professor of Critical Care Medicine, Anesthesiology, Medical Ethics University of Alberta'Just wonderful. I love the exploration of what it means to survive, at what cost and so on. Such an important factor and it's a real problem with what we do. An old surgeon once told me ‘just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Operating is the easiest thing in the world, not doing so is incredibly challenging’. A lovely book.' Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS Cardiothoracic and Transplant Surgeon and author of Can You Die of a Broken Heart?‘An illuminating, compassionate insight into the fascinating world of intensive care.’ Leah Hazzard, author of Hard PushedCritical is an intelligent, compelling and profoundly insightful journey into the world of intensive care medicine and the lives of people who have forever been changed by it. Being critically ill means one or more of your vital organs have failed – this could be your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, gut or even your brain. Starting with the first recognised case in which a little girl was saved by intensive care in 1952 in Copenhagen, Matt writes brilliantly about the fascinating history, practices and technology in this newest of all the major medical specialties. Matt guides us around the ICU by guiding us around the body and the different organs, and in this way, we learn not only the stories of many of the patients he’s treated over the years, but also about the various functions different parts of the body.   He draws on his time spent with real patients, on the brink of death, and explains how he and his colleagues fight against the odds to help them live. Happily many of his cases have happy endings, but Matt also writes movingly about those cases which will always remain with him – the cases where the mysteries of the body proved too hard to solve, or diagnoses came too late or made no difference to the outcome.

Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary


Merriam-Webster - 1992
    More than 35,000 entries. Pronunciations provided for all entries. Covers brand names and generic equivalents of common drugs.

Everything that Makes Us Human: Case Notes of a Children's Brain Surgeon


Jay Jayamohan - 2020
    That’s because he’s a Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon in a busy Oxford hospital. Every day, parents put all their faith in him to make their In this gripping and sometimes heartrending book, Jayamohan – who has featured in two highly acclaimed BBC fly-on-the-wall series following the work of neurosurgeons – brings the highs and lows of the operating theatre into vivid life. Beginning with his struggles as an Asian growing up in 1970s Britain, he chronicles his early days as a medical student and spans decades of extraordinary activity, drawing on case studies from various aspects of his career: not all of which have happy endings. Jayamohan describes how he found the strength to keep going despite terrible setbacks: no matter how many times he is knocked down, he always gets up again to face the next challenge.

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine


Lindsey Fitzharris - 2017
    She conjures up early operating theaters--no place for the squeamish--and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These medical pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than their patients' afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn't have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.Fitzharris dramatically recounts Lister's discoveries in gripping detail, culminating in his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection--and could be countered by antiseptics. Focusing on the tumultuous period from 1850 to 1875, she introduces us to Lister and his contemporaries--some of them brilliant, some outright criminal--and takes us through the grimy medical schools and dreary hospitals where they learned their art, the deadhouses where they studied anatomy, and the graveyards they occasionally ransacked for cadavers.Eerie and illuminating, The Butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world.

Basic Immunology: Functions and Disorders of the Immune System [with Student Consult Online Access]


Abul K. Abbas - 2001
    The format makes learning easy with short, easy-to-read chapters, color tables, key point summaries, and review questions in every chapter. You'll get the latest coverage on regulatory T cells, biology of the Th17 subset of CD4+ T cells, and more. The full-color artwork, comprehensive glossary, and clinical cases are just some of the features that reinforce and test your understanding of how the immune system functions. Student Consult online access lets you search the full text online and pursue further study through integration links. Covers the most up-to-date immunology information including regulatory T cells, and biology of the Th17 subset of CD4+ T cells to keep you completely current. Features integration links through included STUDENT CONSULT access for more in-depth study. Relates basic science to clinical disorders through clinical cases for better application in a real-world setting. Provides a full Glossary to keep you on the cutting edge of immunologic terminology. Includes appendices summarizing the features of CD Molecules, a handy Glossary, and Clinical Cases that test your understanding of how the immune system functions in health and disease. Presents beautiful full-color artwork for enhanced visual learning.

The Big Free


Martha B. Boone - 2017
     New Orleans, 1982. Voodoo spells, prostitutes, prisoners, and veterans who are adamant about the size of their manhood—it’s all just another day at Charity Hospital, also known as The Big Free. It’s a medical free-for-all with the toughest trauma surgery in America, and Elizabeth—fresh from medical school in Charleston, wearing pearls and pink plaid socks—is one of the first women to work there.   Half of the doctors who start the surgery program never finish. Nothing in her proper Southern upbringing prepared Elizabeth for the gritty and gruesome world she now experiences on a daily basis. And even if she’s tougher than anyone first expected, the question remains . . . will she make the cut?   Full of drama, humor, and New Orleans flavor, The Big Free is a young doctor’s coming of age story as only a true medical insider can tell it.

Patient by Patient: Lessons in Love, Loss, Hope, and Healing from a Doctor's Practice


Emily R. Transue - 2008
    Transue began chronicling her experiences in her memoir of residency, On Call, and she continues her education here but the source of her knowledge about love, loss, hope and healing are not medical texts or professors but the patients she treats and gets to know – those she helps to wellness and those she must let go.

Travell Simons' Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual: Two Volume Set: Second Edition/Volume 1 and First Edition/Volume 2


David G. Simons - 1998
    Travell & Simons' Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual.

Herding Hemingway's Cats: Understanding how our genes work


Kat Arney - 2016
    We know they make your eyes blue, your hair curly or your nose straight. The media tells us that our genes control the risk of cancer, heart disease, alcoholism or Alzheimer's. The cost of DNA sequencing has plummeted from billions of pounds to a few hundred, and gene-based advances in medicine hold huge promise.So we've all heard of genes, but how do they actually work?According to legend, Ernest Hemingway was once given a six-toed cat by an old sea captain, and her distinctive descendants still roam the writer's Florida estate today. Scientists now know that the fault driving this profusion of digits lies in a tiny genetic control switch, miles away (in molecular terms) from the gene that 'makes' toes. And it's the same mistake that gives rise to multi-toed humans too.There are 2.2 metres of DNA inside every one of your cells, encoding roughly 20,000 genes. These are the 'recipes' that tell our cells how to make the building blocks of life, along with myriad control switches ensuring they're turned on and off at the right time and in the right place. But rather than a static string of genetic code, this is a dynamic, writhing biological library. And figuring out how it all works – how your genes make you, you – is a major challenge for researchers around the world.Drawing on stories ranging from six-toed cats and stickleback hips to wobbly worms and zombie genes, geneticist Kat Arney explores the how our genes work, creating a companion reader to the book of life itself.

The Best American Science Writing 2004


Dava Sobel - 2004
    K. C. Cole's "Fun with Physics" is a profile of astrophysicist Janet Conrad that blends her personal life with professional activity. In "Desperate Measures," the doctor and writer Atul Gawande profiles the surgeon Francis Daniels Moore, whose experiments in the 1940s and '50s pushed medicine harder and farther than almost anyone had contemplated. Also included is a poem by the legendary John Updike, "Mars as Bright as Venus." The collection ends with Diane Ackerman's "ebullient" essay "We Are All a Part of Nature."Together these twenty-three articles on a wide range of today's most current topics in science -- from biology, physics, biotechnology, and astronomy, to anthropology, genetics, evolutionary theory, and cognition‚ represent the full spectrum of scientific writing from America's most prominent science authors, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (Scientific American).

Covid-19: What You Need to Know About the Coronavirus and the Race for the Vaccine


Michael Mosley - 2020
    Based on the latest scientific discoveries, Dr Mosley provides a fascinating and detailed understanding of the secrets of this coronavirus, how it spreads, how it infects your body and how your immune system tries to fight back. With access to leading experts, he reports on the battle to find treatments and a safe and effective vaccine (ultimately, the only way to defeat the virus). Armed with the facts about Covid-19 you'll be in a better position to protect yourself and your family as the world begins to reopen. Eating well, sleeping soundly, exercising and managing stress are all vital for keeping your body and immune system in the best possible shape to fight the virus. These are areas where Dr Mosley, creator of the 5:2 diet, is well known for his science-based and practical approach.

America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System


Steven Brill - 2015
    It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation.   But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill   “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.”—The New York Times   “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.” —The New York Times Book Review   “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ”—Los Angeles Times  “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.”—The Daily Beast  “One of the most important books of our time.”—Walter Isaacson   “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.”—The New York Review of Books

The Tumor


John Grisham - 2015
    In this short book, he provides readers with a fictional account of how a real, new medical technology could revolutionize the future of medicine by curing with sound. THE TUMOR follows the present day experience of the fictional patient Paul, an otherwise healthy 35-year-old father who is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Grisham takes readers through a detailed account of Paul’s treatment and his family’s experience that doesn’t end as we would hope. Grisham then explores an alternate future, where Paul is diagnosed with the same brain tumor at the same age, but in the year 2025, when a treatment called focused ultrasound is able to extend his life expectancy. Focused ultrasound has the potential to treat not just brain tumors, but many other disorders, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, hypertension, and prostate, breast and pancreatic cancer. For more information, you can visit The Focused Ultrasound Foundation’s website. Here you will find a video of Grisham on the TEDx stage with the Foundation’s chairman and a Parkinson’s patient who brings the audience to its feet sharing her incredible story of a focused ultrasound “miracle.” Readers will get a taste of the narrative they expect from Grisham, but this short book will also educate and inspire people to be hopeful about the future of medical innovation.

Medical Terminology For Health Professions


Ann Ehrlich - 1988
    The See and Say pronunciation system makes pronouncing unfamiliar terms easy. Because word parts are integral to learning medical terminology, mastery of these "building blocks" is emphasized in every chapter. Organized by body system, chapters begin with an overview of the structures and functions of that system so you can relate these to the specialists, pathology, diagnostic, and treatment procedures that follow. Learning Exercises in each chapter offer a variety of formats that require written answers. Writing terms reinforces learning and provides practice to help master spelling and enhance comprehension.

Cause of Death


Geoffrey Garrett - 2001
    This volume presents his personal memoirs and chronicles many of his infamous, unusual and heartbreaking cases together with a history of his professional life, giving a unique insight into a pathologist's work. It also includes a no-holds-barred account of the basic methodology of a post-mortem examination.