A Brief History of Medicine: From Hippocrates' Four Humours to Crick and Watson's Double Helix


Paul Strathern - 2005
    But its roots stretch back as far as ancient Greece, when medicine first departed from the divine and the mystical and moved toward observation and logic. Its early development was slow, constrained by the taboo around dissection (only external symptoms could be used for diagnosis), as well as superstition and mysticism (illness was the work of demons and pixies and curable only by penitence). Paul Strathern steers us skillfully through the maze of discoveries, diseases, and wrong turns that have made medicine what it is today—super efficient, high tech, and increasingly costly. A Brief History of Medicine offers an accessible history of the arguments, missteps, and dumb luck that led to the world's most important medical breakthroughs—from anatomy, grave robbing, the plague, and germ theory to vaccination, quackery, microorganisms, and penicillin.

The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth


Matthew Algeo - 2011
    He boarded a friend’s yacht, sailed into the calm blue waters of Long Island Sound, and--poof!--disappeared. He would not be heard from again for five days. What happened during those five days, and in the days and weeks that followed, was so incredible that, even when the truth was finally revealed, many Americans simply would not believe it.The President Is a Sick Man details an extraordinary but almost unknown chapter in American history: Grover Cleveland’s secret cancer surgery and the brazen political cover-up by a politician whose most memorable quote was “Tell the truth.” When an enterprising reporter named E. J. Edwards exposed the secret operation, Cleveland denied it. The public believed the “Honest President,” and Edwards was dismissed as “a disgrace to journalism.” The facts concerning the disappearance of Grover Cleveland that summer were so well concealed that even more than a century later a full and fair account has never been published. Until now.

The Fluoride Deception


Christopher Bryson - 2004
    military, and the historic reassurances of fluoride safety provided by the nation’s public health establishment. The Fluoride Deception reads like a thriller, but one supported by two hundred pages of source notes, years of investigative reporting, scores of scientist interviews, and archival research in places such as the newly opened files of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission. The book is nothing less than an exhumation of one of the great secret narratives of the industrial era: how a grim workplace poison and the most damaging environmental pollutant of the cold war was added to our drinking water and toothpaste.From the Hardcover edition.

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry


Jeffrey A. Lieberman - 2015
    Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity — beginning after World War II — as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field — from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel — Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating read, and an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.“A lucid popular history...At once skeptical and triumphalist. It shows just how far psychiatry has come.” —Julia M. Klein, Boston Globe

Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist


William R. Maples - 1994
    William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer.  In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

The Negro Motorist Green-Book: 1940 Facsimile Edition


Victor H. Green - 1940
    

The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine


James Le Fanu - 1999
    In the same period it also produced treatments to control the progress of Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia. It made realities of open-heart surgery, organ transplants, test-tube babies. Unquestionably, the medical accomplishments of the postwar years stand at the forefront of human endeavor, yet progress in recent decades has slowed nearly to a halt. In this winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, medical doctor and columnist James Le Fanu both surveys the glories of medicine in the postwar years and analyzes the factors that for the past twenty-five years have increasingly widened the gulf between achievement and advancement: the social theories of medicine, ethical issues, and political debates over health care that have hobbled the development of vaccines and discovery of new "miracle" cures. While fully demonstrating the extraordinary progress effected by medical research in the latter half of the twentieth century, Le Fanu also identifies the perils that confront medicine in the twenty-first. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs add to what the Los Angeles Times cited as "a sobering, contrarian challenge" to the "nostrum of medicine as a never-ending font of ‘miracle cures'." "[From] a respected science writer ... important information that ... has been overlooked or ignored by many physicians." —New Republic "Provocative and engrossing and informative." —Houston Chronicle "Marvelously written, meticulously researched ... one of the most thought-provoking and important works to appear in recent years." —Choice

Mary: Spirit Woman of the Old West


Janis Hoffman - 2016
    There are many corrections and many notes stuck between the pages, and the ink and pencil are faded and often difficult to read. I have had to guess at the meaning a few times and hope I haven’t done too much harm to her intent. Many changes were made in punctuation, spelling, paragraphing and chapters, and I’ve updated a few words, like Black Feet to Blackfoot. She made a few mistakes I did not correct, like mixing up the locations of the Little Blue and Big Blue rivers. The name Mary Faraday Huntington does not appear in any of the old records. Whoever wrote the words was neither shy nor humble, has a very foul mouth, and shamelessly talks about things rarely mentioned in stories of the Wild West. Her story is the way it was long ago, not the sugar coated fairly tales of book and film. Her story reminds me of something Jamake Highwater wrote: “The outward rusticity of primal behavior makes Western people devise a self-serving ideal of themselves as civilized, which sets them widely apart from other peoples and from nature. Their withdrawal from an awareness of their place in nature is nearly complete…primal peoples live among animals and vegetation constantly in close contact with the sources of nourishment and death, understanding their environment and expressing their ideas and feelings in terms of the natural world. In contrast, people in the West have created an idealization of their relationship with nature which has neither life nor spirit.” ADVENTURES IN THE WILD WEST OF LONG AGO Mary Faraday Huntington I’ve led a wild life and had a hell of a good time. I still have my nose, all my fingers and my scalp thanks to my high intelligence, strength, quickness, excellent judgment, and a little help from all my many, many friends. I promise not to lie too bad. If you are a prissy little thing, best to pass on by. If you are a refined gentleman, pass on by. 1. You’re just a girrrrrrl 2. The Under Water People 3. Fort Childs 4. Rising Wolf 5. The second best whorehouse in town 1 YOU’RE JUST A GIRRRRRL “You can't race. You’re just a girrrrrrl!” I bounced him a good one and he shrieked and jumped up and down with blood spurting out of his big, ugly nose. Oh my, how he did carry on. I got on my pony and went to the line. The flag dropped and off we went. No problem, I promised Charlie 3 cobs if we win. He got his corn and I got a shiny silver dollar and a tin can full of chewing tobacco. I traded the can for a bunch of fancy ribbons at old man Bailey’s haberdashery. ____________________ My name is Mary Faraday Huntington and I was born in 1834 at Independence, Missouri. My mother died when I was 9 months old and an Indian woman working at a whorehouse was the only one Christian enough to take me in. Don’t know who my father was but he must have been big, strong, and sharp as a whip. Probably an army man having a little fun. Sure they call me a bastard, but they learned quick enough not to do that to my face. Jennie is a Blackfoot spirit woman and a real good mother who cooks and cleans at Polly’s Paradise. We have a little room in the basement. Her real name is Aokii’aki, Water Woman. She taught me sign and Blackfoot, how to live off the land, and how to fight with my hands and feet and knife. And she is teaching me the ways of a spirit woman.

Belonging: One Woman's Search for Truth and Justice for the Tuam Babies


Catherine Corless - 2021
    The lecturer encouraged the class to 'see history all around you', to 'dig deeper and ask why'.It was from these humble beginnings that Catherine began researching the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in County Galway, which she had passed every day as a child on her way to school. Slowly, she began to uncover a dark secret that had been kept for many years: the bodies of 796 babies had been buried in what she believed to be a sewage tank on the grounds. But who were these children, how did they get there and who had been responsible for looking after them?Determined to ask why, Catherine doggedly set about investigating further. Her quest for justice for the Tuam babies and those who went through that home would span over a decade as, often against fierce resistance, she brought to light a terrible truth that shocked the world, impacted the Vatican, and led to a Commission of Investigation in Ireland.Part memoir, part detective story, Belonging is both Catherine's account, and that of those 796 children for whom she came to care so deeply: one of the tender love of a mother and her child; of pain and trauma; of the unforgettable screams which echoed through the corridors as children were taken from their mothers; and of a mystery which continues to this very day, as so many are still left without answers, still searching to know where, and to whom they belong.

Final Exams: True Crime Cases from Cyril Wecht


Cyril H. Wecht - 2013
    Wecht, M.D., J.D., one of America’s most respected forensic pathologists. Coauthored by crime writer Dawna Kaufmann, Final Exams explores both the technical and the human side of murder. From the heartbreaking case of abducted child, Jessica Lunsford, held captive within shouting distance of her loved ones, to the peculiar story of a murder for hire with a most unlikely victim, Final Exams takes the reader behind the scenes. Secrets about the private lives of both predators and victims are revealed as the authors detail the events that turned rage to tragedy. Fans of CSI will appreciate how Wecht and Kaufmann share the real life process of solving crimes with clues left with the victim.

21 Speeches That Shaped Our World: The people and ideas that changed the way we think


Chris Abbott - 2010
    He examines the power of the arguments embedded in these speeches to inspire people to achieve great things, or do great harm. Abbott draws upon his political expertise to explain how our current understanding of the world is rooted in pivotal moments of history. These moments are captured in the words of a range of influential speakers including: Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King, Jr, Enoch Powell, Napoleon Beazley, Kevin Rudd, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, Margaret Beckett, Winston Churchill, Salvador Allende, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Tim Collins, Mohandas Gandhi, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robin Cook and Barack Obama. The speeches in this book are arranged thematically, linked by concepts such as 'might is right', 'with us or against us' and 'give peace a chance'. Each transcript is accompanied by an insightful commentary that analyses how the words relate to our modern society. Fresh and relevant, this is a book that will make you stop in your tracks and think about what is really happening in the world today.

BRS Gross Anatomy


Kyung Won Chung - 1988
    Written in a concise, bulleted outline format, this well-illustrated text offers 500 USMLE-style review questions, answers, and explanations and features comprehensive content and upgraded USMLE Step 1 information.