Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana


Larry Sloman - 1998
    Beginning with the hemp farming if George Washington, author Larry "Ratso" Sloman traces the fascinating story of our nation's love-hate relationship with the resilient weed we know as marijuana.Herein we find antiheroes such as Allen Ginsberg, Robert Mitchum (the first Hollywood actor busted for pot), Louis Armstrong (who smoked pot every day), the Beatles, and more rapscallions standing up for, supporting, smoking, and politicizing the bounties of marijuana.With a new afterword by Michael Simmons, who has written for Rolling Stone, LA Weekly, and High Times, on the progress of the hemp movement and the importance of medical marijuana, Reefer Madness is a classic that goes on.

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

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.

Human Behavioral Biology


Robert M. Sapolsky - 2010
    How to approach complex normal and abnormal behaviors through biology. How to integrate disciplines including sociobiology, ethology, neuroscience, and endocrinology to examine behaviors such as aggression, sexual behavior, language use, and mental illness.36 hours lectures

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest


Mark J. Plotkin - 1993
    Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest.For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin has raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest. Mark Plotkin combines the Darwinian spirit of the great writer-explorers of the nineteenth century—curious, discursive, and rigorously scientific—with a very modern concern for the erosion of our environment and the vanishing culture of native peoples.

From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs


Andrew Weil - 1983
    This enormously popular book — the best and most authoritative resource for unbiased information about how drugs affect the mind and the body — covers a wide range of available substances, from coffee to marijuana, antihistamines to psychedelics, steroids to smart drugs, and discusses likely effects, precautions, and alternatives. Now expanded and updated to cover such drugs as oxycontin, Ecstasy, Prozac, and ephedra and to address numerous ongoing issues, including the United States’ war on drugs, marijuana for therapeutic use, the overuse of drugs for children diagnosed with ADHD, and more, From Chocolate to Morphine is an invaluable resource.

Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine


Thomas Hager - 2019
    It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine.  ​Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.

Osler's Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic


Hillary Johnson - 1996
    In many circles this disease, still known as Yuppi Flu, is dismissed as a psychological aberration. For the nearly two million people who have endured its traumatic and very real debilitating physical effects, however, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is no joke.

Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick


Maya Dusenbery - 2018
    In addition to offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its effects, she suggests concrete steps we can take to cure it.

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom


Katherine Eban - 2019
    Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects.The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

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.

Silent Spring


Rachel Carson - 1962
    The book documents the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.The book appeared in September 1962 and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.

The Alarming History of Medicine: Amusing Anecdotes from Hippocrates to Heart Transplants


Richard Gordon - 1993
    Using hilarious stories, based on actual facts, Richard Gordon shows that most of the monumental discoveries were originally accidents.A must-read for hypochondriacs, doctors, medical students, and anyone fascinated by the world of medicine, The Alarming History of Medicine is clever, revealing--and all true.

Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs


Michael T. Osterholm - 2017
    And as outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, MERS, and Zika have demonstrated, we are woefully underprepared to deal with the fallout. So what can -- and must -- we do in order to protect ourselves from mankind's deadliest enemy?Drawing on the latest medical science, case studies, policy research, and hard-earned epidemiological lessons, Deadliest Enemy explores the resources and programs we need to develop if we are to keep ourselves safe from infectious disease. The authors show how we could wake up to a reality in which many antibiotics no longer cure, bioterror is a certainty, and the threat of a disastrous influenza or coronavirus pandemic looms ever larger. Only by understanding the challenges we face can we prevent the unthinkable from becoming the inevitable.Deadliest Enemy is high scientific drama, a chronicle of medical mystery and discovery, a reality check, and a practical plan of action.

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body


Armand Marie Leroi - 2003
    This elegant, humane, and engaging book "captures what we know of the development of what makes us human" (Nature).Visit Armand Marie Leroi on the web: http: //armandleroi.com/index.htmlStepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science,