Showing titles in History & Commentary

The hunt for the origin of the AIDS virus began over 20 years ago. It was a journey that went around the world and involved painstaking research to unravel how, when, and where the virus first infected humans. Dorothy H. Crawford traces the story back to the remote rain forests of Africa - home to the primates that carry the ancestral virus - and reveals how HIV-1 first jumped from chimpanzees to humans in rural southeast Cameroon. Examining how this happened, and how it then travelled back to Colonial west central Africa where it eventually exploded as a pandemic, she asks why and how it was able to spread so widely.

In Religion and Medicine, Dr. Jeff Levin outlines this longstanding history and the multifaceted interconnections between these two institutions. The first book to cover the full breadth of this subject, it documents religion-medicine alliances across religious traditions, throughout the world, and over the course of history. Levin summarizes a wide range of material in the most comprehensive introduction to this emerging field of scholarship to date.

Una historia de las catástrofes deslumbrante, original y repleta de ideas para el futuro que pone en perspectiva el ya conocido como annus horribilis.

The dazzling promise of stem cell medicine: does it work and will it save us? Two experts look at the hype For decades, we've been anticipating the dawn of regenerative medicine. Again and again, we've been promised that stem cells will soon cure just about every ill imaginable. If not tomorrow...

Unlock the hidden history and fascinating developments in the world of forensic science with Historical Milestones in Forensic Science. This comprehensive eBook embarks on a captivating journey through time, exploring the moments and breakthroughs that have defined forensic science as we know it today. Begin with an insightful introduction that sets the stage for the evolution of forensic practices from ancient Egypt, China, and Rome, demonstrating the foundational role these civilizations played in shaping forensic techniques. Uncover the birth of medicolegal death investigation, tracing ...

The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorized and understood. A century on, their conceptions of mental illness continue to influence our views today. Beliefs and behavior were divided up into the pathological and the healthy. The influence of religion and the supernatural became significant measures of insanity in individuals, countries, and cultures. Troubled by Faith explores these ideas about the supernatural across society through the prism of medical history.

New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nurse shortage. So begins the remarkable true story of the Black nurses who helped cure tuberculosis, one of the world's deadliest plagues, told alongside the often strange chronicle of the cure's discovery. Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this story follows the intrepid young women, the 'Black Angels', who, for twenty years, risked their lives working under dreadful conditions while caring for the city's poorest.

Every seventy-two seconds someone in America develops Alzheimer’s disease (AD). And it has been said that almost everyone living long enough will eventually show evidence of Alzheimer’s disease. Thus far its cause has remained elusive. Nevertheless, recently, study after study, in which scientists have injected human Alzheimer diseased brain tissue into mice and other laboratory animals that later developed the disease have left little doubt that Alzheimer’s arises from an infectious process—the focus of debate seeming to be which particular disease. And clearly, whatever the ...

Dr. Mackowiak, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, offers a gripping and authoritative account of 13 patients who took center stage in world history. The result is a new understanding of how the past unfolded, as well as a sweeping survey of the history of medicine. What was the ailment that drove Caligula mad? Why did Stonewall Jackson die after having an arm amputated, when so many other Civil War soldiers survived such operations?

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands is the bold, witty memoir of Mary Seacole, a Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who defied racism and sexism to care for soldiers during the Crimean War in the 1850s. Writing in her own voice, Seacole recounts her travels across the Caribbean, Central America, and Europe, sharing vivid stories of healing, hardship, and independence.

In the 16th century, when explorers travelled deep into the jungles of South America in search of gold and spices, they brought back many colourful tales of their adventures. None of these tales was more astonishing, or caused more concern, than that of the mystical properties of the substance with which the natives anointed their darts and arrows.

From 1942 through 1972, American biomedical researchers deliberately infected people with hepatitis. Government-sponsored researchers were attempting to discover the basic features of the disease and the viruses causing it, and to develop interventions that would quell recurring outbreaks. Drawing from extensive archival research and in-person interviews, Sydney Halpern traces the hepatitis program from its origins in World War II through its expansion during the initial Cold War years, to its demise in the early 1970s amid an outcry over research abuse.

Jede Krankheit und jeder Mensch haben das Potential, Medizingeschichte zu schreiben. Seit Hunderten von Jahren ergründen Ärzte und Ärztinnen auf der ganzen Welt die Geheimnisse der Medizin, indem sie sich echte Fälle ansehen. Autor und Arzt Roy Benaroch hat für uns spannende Fälle der Medizingeschichte gesammelt, in denen bekannte Persönlichkeiten der Weltgeschichte als mysteriöser Patient oder Patientin vor uns stehen.

Leading transplant surgeon Dr. Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, moving organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the stories of his own patients. Gripping and evocative, How Death Becomes Life takes us inside the operating room and presents the stark dilemmas that transplant surgeons must face daily.

In 2006, the Wall Street pioneer and philanthropist Ray Chambers flicked through some holiday snapshots taken by a friend and remarked on the placid beauty of a group of sleeping Malawian children. "They're not sleeping," his friend told him. "They're in malarial comas. A few days later, they were all dead." This moment sparked Chambers' determination to coordinate an unprecedented, worldwide effort to eradicate a disease that has haunted humanity since before the advent of medicine.

Blending fascinating history with lacerating wit, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth will take you on a tour of some of the funniest, strangest and most wince-inducing corners of medical history. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In 1918, the world faced the deadliest pandemic in human history. What can the story of the so-called Spanish Flu teach us about the fight against present day crises, and how to prepare for future outbreaks? At the height of WWI...

Somos lo que escuchamos: impacto de la música en la salud individual y social atraerá a los lectores de Oliver Sacks y David Byrne, ya que es una investigación transdisciplinaria sin precedentes que contextualiza a la música y sus efectos a nivel histórico, científico y social. Es un libro esencial para los amantes de la música y todos aquellos que buscan mejorar su salud mental y física. El libro culmina con un original libro de ejercicios para que el lector pase de la teoría a la práctica.

In the 1970s, Dr. Alan Scott sought to selectively weaken eye muscles to treat strabismus (when one or both eyes are misaligned) without surgery. After failed attempts with other agents, Scott developed a method to stabilize the bacteria that causes botulism, culminating in a drug that eventually became known as Botox.

This book tells the story of the huge addiction treatment industry which flourished in the United States between 1890 and the advent of Prohibition in 1920. The story begins in Russia in 1886, where a number of doctors discovered a relatively effective pharmacological treatment for alcoholism. Although this Russian discovery was published in countless major English language medical journals, it was entirely ignored by the US addiction experts of the day, who eschewed pharmacological treatments, and instead preferred to lock people up in inebriate asylums where they could be subjected to ...