Book picks similar to
Medicine and Culture by Lynn Payer
non-fiction
anthropology
medicine
medical-anthropology
Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation
Elissa Stein - 2009
Flow spans its fascinating, occasionally wacky and sometimes downright scary story: from mikvahs (ritual cleansing baths) to menopause, hysteria to hysterectomies—not to mention the Pill, cramps, the history of underwear, and the movie about puberty they showed you in 5th grade.
Flow answers such questions as: What’s the point of getting a period? What did women do before pads and tampons? What about new drugs that promise to end periods—a hot idea or not? Sex during your period: gross or a turn-on? And what’s normal, anyway? With color reproductions of (campy) historical ads and early (excruciating) femcare devices, it also provides a fascinating (and mind-boggling) gallery of this complex, personal and uniquely female process.
As irreverent as it is informative, Flow gives an everyday occurrence its true props – and eradicates the stigma placed on it for centuries.
China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine
Rosemary Gibson - 2018
This is a disturbing, well-researched wake-up call for improving the current system of drug supply and manufacturing.Several decades ago, penicillin, vitamin C, and many other prescription and over-the-counter products were manufactured in the United States. But with the rise of globalization, antibiotics, antidepressants, birth control pills, blood pressure medicines, cancer drugs, among many others are made in China and sold in the United States. China's biggest impact on the US drug supply is making essential ingredients for thousands of medicines found in American homes and used in hospital intensive care units and operating rooms. The authors convincingly argue that there are at least two major problems with this scenario. First, it is inherently risky for the United States to become dependent on any one country as a source for vital medicines, especially given the uncertainties of geopolitics. For example, if an altercation in the South China Sea causes military personnel to be wounded, doctors may rely upon medicines with essential ingredients made by the adversary. Second, lapses in safety standards and quality control in Chinese manufacturing are a risk. Citing the concerns of FDA officials and insiders within the pharmaceutical industry, the authors document incidents of illness and death caused by contaminated medications that prompted reform. This probing book examines the implications of our reliance on China on the quality and availability of vital medicines.
The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine
Ted Kaptchuk - 1983
Kaptchuk’s book is an invaluable resource in the field and an authoritative guide that helps readers understand both Western and Eastern healing practices. Here in the revised edition is further research into ancient Chinese practices as well as active involvement in cutting-edge scientific research.
Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution
Holly Tucker - 2010
Days later, the madman was dead and Denis was framed for murder. A riveting exposé of the fierce debates, deadly politics, and cutthroat rivalries behind the first transfusion experiments, Blood Work takes us from dissection rooms in palaces to the streets of Paris, providing an unforgettable portrait of an era that wrestled with the same questions about morality and experimentation that haunt medical science today.
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media
Susan J. Douglas - 1994
Photos.
Human Anatomy & Physiology [With Interactive Physiology 10-System Suite and Paperback Book and Access Code]
Elaine N. Marieb - 1989
Marieb and Katja Hoehn have produced the most accessible, comprehensive, up-to-date, and visually stunning anatomy & physiology textbook on the market. Marieb draws on her career as an A&P professor and her experience as a part-time nursing student, while Hoehn relies on her medical education and classroom experience to explain concepts and processes in a meaningful and memorable way. The most significant revision to date, the Eighth Edition makes it easier for you to learn key concepts in A&P. The new edition features a whole new art program that is not only more visually dynamic and vibrant than in previous editions but is also much more pedagogically effective for today's students, including new Focus figures, which guide you through the toughest concepts in A&P. The text has been edited to make it easier than ever to study from and navigate, with integrated objectives, new concept check questions, and a new design program.
Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School
Shamus Rahman Khan - 2010
Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America’s wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul’s, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality.In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul’s students continue to learn what they always have — how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul’s students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life — from Beowulf to Jaws — and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule.
The Dobe Ju/'hoansi
Richard B. Lee - 1993
It documents their determination to take hold of their own destiny-despite exploitation of their habitat and relentless development-to assert their political rights and revitalize their communities. Use of the name Ju/'hoansi (meaning "real people") acknowledges their new sense of empowerment.
Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
Derrick Jensen - 2006
Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.
Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War
Megan K. Stack - 2010
A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a twenty-five-year-old national correspondent for the "Los Angeles Times," was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories. "Every Man in This Village Is a Liar" is Megan K. Stack's riveting account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy. She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews. Beautiful, savage, and unsettling, "Every Man in This Village Is a Liar" is a memoir about the wars of the twenty-first century that readers will long remember.
Introduction to Public Health
Mary Jane Schneider - 1999
Key Features: The Author Uses A Reader-Friendly, Narrative Style Making The Text Engaging And Accessible To A Broad Range Of Students. The Text Illustrates The Multidisciplinary Nature Of Public Health And The Complex Ethical And Political Issues Central To It. It Includes Discussions Of Epidemiological Investigation, Biomedical Research, Environmental Assessment, Analyses Of Individual And Group Behavior, Massive Data Collection Efforts, And Policy Developments. New To This Edition: New Discussions About U.S. Health Care Reform New Discussions Of The Globalization Of National Economies And Its Effect On The Health Of Populations Expanded Discussions On Health Disparities New Analysis Of What Went Wrong Just After Hurricane Katrina Updated Discussions Of Developments In Topics Such Are H1N1 Swine Flu, Hormone Replacement Therapy, FDA Regulation, HPV Vaccine Controversy Planning For Healthy People 2020 And Much More.
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong
Jean-Benoît Nadeau - 2003
Decrypting French ideas about land, privacy and language, Nadeau and Barlow weave together the threads of French society--from centralization and the Napoleonic Code to elite education and even street protests--giving us, for the first time, a complete picture of the French.
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
Nick Reding - 2009
Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people. As if this weren t enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, longlasting, and highly addictive drug has rolled into town.Over a period of four years, journalist Nick Reding brings us into the heart of Oelwein through a cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose caseload is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime; and Jeff Rohrick, a meth addict, still trying to kick the habit after twenty years. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by the drug and the global forces that set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.
The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills
David A. Ansell - 2017
But when detailing the many things that the poor have not, we often overlook the most critical--their health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. In nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, David A. Ansell, MD, has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients"--
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
Bill Wasik - 2012
The most fatal virus known to science, rabies — a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans — kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind’s oldest and most fearsome foes.