Download or read book Bizarre Medical Ideas written by Edzard Ernst and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Strange Medicine written by Nathan Belofsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the astonishing and peculiar history of medicine with this perfect gift for history buffs, doctors, and anyone looking to be amazed by the brilliant and bizarre ideas that shaped the world of medicine as we know it. From the use of electric eels in ancient Egypt to medieval dentists burning candles to combat invisible worms, this book uncovers the weirdest medical practices throughout history, highlighting the most dubious ideas, strangest treatments, and biggest blunders. Entertaining, shocking, and sometimes stomach-turning, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward. Did you know: • Renaissance physicians timed surgical procedures according to the position of the stars? • Blood from beheadings was believed to cure epilepsy? • Dr. Walter Freeman, the world’s foremost practitioner of lobotomies, practiced his craft while traveling on family camping trips, hammering ice picks into the eye sockets of his patients in between hikes in the woods? Strange Medicine is an illuminating panorama of medical history as you’ve never seen it before.
Download or read book Bizarre Medicine written by Ruth Clifford Engs and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopedia explores historical and contemporary fringe remedies seen as strange, ridiculous, or even gruesome by modern Western medicine but which nevertheless played an important role in the history of medicine. From placing leeches on the neck to treat a cough to using crocodile dung to prevent pregnancy, a number of medical treatments that now seem unusual were once commonplace. While a few of these remedies may have been effective, most were either useless or actually counterproductive to good health. Even today, there are alternative and fringe treatments considered bizarre by mainstream medicine yet used by hundreds of thousands of people. Bizarre Medicine: Unusual Treatments and Practices through the Ages offers a fascinating look into the history of medicine. Entries are organized by disease or medical condition and explore the folk and traditional "cures" used to treat them. Explanations are provided for why some treatments may have worked and why others may have done more harm than good. In addition, entries provide a clear description of the causes, symptoms, and current treatment options for each condition based on current scientific understanding. Each entry also discusses the condition's enduring impact on society and the arts.
Download or read book Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar written by David Haviland and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-12-30 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The next book in the strange and fascinating series that began with the national bestseller Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers & Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body. The national bestseller Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers & Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body uncovered everything one might want to know (and a few things one might not) about the human body. The follow-up bestseller Why Fish Fart & Other Useless or Gross Information About the World contained an artful selection of odd and/or unsavory facts about the world. Why Dogs Eat Poop scoured the animal kingdom for gross and or off-color facts about animals. In this delightfully disgusting new book in the series, David Haviland plumbs the world of medicine to uncover the answers to such vitally important questions as: *What exactly is urine therapy? *Is it safe to fly with breast implants? *How did a nine-and-a-half-inch spatula find its way into a surgery patient's body? *Why do some boxers drink their own pee? *What is cyclic vomiting syndrome and how can one avoid it? Any fan of the absurd and/or obscure is sure to delight in this strange (and slightly stomach-turning) book.
Download or read book Genius on the Edge written by Gerald Imber and published by Kaplan Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genius on the Edge introduces the public to the man who revolutionized modern surgery at the same time it weaves a compelling biography with a fascinating tour of American medicine at the turn of the 19th century. Coming of age in the wake of the Civil War, William Stewart Halsted became a doctor in an era when surgery was a dangerous game of chance. By the time of his death in 1922, Halsted had transformed surgery and had pioneered techniques and procedures that are routine in today's operating rooms. But this came at a high price-drug addiction and alienation from his friends and family. His enormous professional accomplishments, eccentric personal behavior, and lifetime of drug addiction defy conventional wisdom. In the first comprehensive portrait of this complex and indisputably brilliant man, author Gerald Imber-a renowned plastic surgeon himself-takes readers to the upper echelons of society in New York City and Baltimore, blending tales of Gilded Age decadence with captivating accounts from the front lines of medical discovery. Combining the historical atmosphere of The Alienist with an unconventional hero, Genius on the Edge celebrates one of history's most daring doctors. Book jacket.
Download or read book Quackery written by Lydia Kang and published by Workman Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison—was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.
Download or read book The WEIRDest People in the World written by Joseph Henrich and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.
Download or read book Ethics Conflict and Medical Treatment for Children E Book written by Dominic Wilkinson and published by Elsevier Health Sciences. This book was released on 2018-08-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should happen when doctors and parents disagree about what would be best for a child? When should courts become involved? Should life support be stopped against parents’ wishes? The case of Charlie Gard, reached global attention in 2017. It led to widespread debate about the ethics of disagreements between doctors and parents, about the place of the law in such disputes, and about the variation in approach between different parts of the world. In this book, medical ethicists Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu critically examine the ethical questions at the heart of disputes about medical treatment for children. They use the Gard case as a springboard to a wider discussion about the rights of parents, the harms of treatment, and the vital issue of limited resources. They discuss other prominent UK and international cases of disagreement and conflict. From opposite sides of the debate Wilkinson and Savulescu provocatively outline the strongest arguments in favour of and against treatment. They analyse some of the distinctive and challenging features of treatment disputes in the 21st century and argue that disagreement about controversial ethical questions is both inevitable and desirable. They outline a series of lessons from the Gard case and propose a radical new ‘dissensus’ framework for future cases of disagreement. This new book critically examines the core ethical questions at the heart of disputes about medical treatment for children. The contents review prominent cases of disagreement from the UK and internationally and analyse some of the distinctive and challenging features around treatment disputes in the 21st century. The book proposes a radical new framework for future cases of disagreement around the care of gravely ill people.
Download or read book The Man Who Touched His Own Heart written by Rob Dunn and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secret history of our most vital organ: the human heart. The Man Who Touched His Own Heart tells the raucous, gory, mesmerizing story of the heart, from the first "explorers" who dug up cadavers and plumbed their hearts' chambers, through the first heart surgeries -- which had to be completed in three minutes before death arrived -- to heart transplants and the latest medical efforts to prolong our hearts' lives, almost defying nature in the process. Thought of as the seat of our soul, then as a mysteriously animated object, the heart is still more a mystery than it is understood. Why do most animals only get one billion beats? (And how did modern humans get to over two billion, effectively letting us live out two lives?) Why are sufferers of gingivitis more likely to have heart attacks? Why do we often undergo expensive procedures when cheaper ones are just as effective? What do Da Vinci, Mary Shelley, and contemporary Egyptian archaeologists have in common? And what does it really feel like to touch your own heart, or to have someone else's beating inside your chest? Rob Dunn's fascinating history of our hearts brings us deep inside the science, history, and stories of the four chambers we depend on most.
Download or read book A Practical Treatise on Impotence Sterility and Allied Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs written by Samuel Weissell Gross and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Every Patient Tells a Story written by Lisa Sanders and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer." A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory—making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment—only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU—bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent—and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness—the diagnosis—revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient’s story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients’ lives.
Download or read book Medical Muses written by Asti Hustvedt and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1862 the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris became the epicenter of the study of hysteria, the mysterious illness then thought to affect half of all women. There, prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot's contentious methods caused furore within the church and divided the medical community. Treatments included hypnosis, piercing and the evocation of demons and, despite the controversy they caused, the experiments became a fascinating and fashionable public spectacle. Medical Muses tells the stories of the women institutionalised in the Salpêtrière. Theirs is a tale of science and ideology, medicine and the occult, of hypnotism, sadism, love and theatre. Combining hospital records, municipal archives, memoirs and letters, Medical Muses sheds new light on a crucial moment in psychiatric history.
Download or read book The Checklist Manifesto written by Atul Gawande and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds. An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
Download or read book Weird Ideas That Work written by Robert I. Sutton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sutton is a sought-after consultant, speaker and Stanford professor. This book brings together 11 of his proven, counter intuitive ideas that work, from hiring people that make employers squirm to encouraging projects likely to fail.
Download or read book Shrinks written by Jeffrey A. Lieberman and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the PBS series Mysterious of Mental Illness, Shrinks brilliantly tells the "astonishing" story of psychiatry's origins, demise, and redemption (Siddhartha Mukherjee). Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening book, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth. In Shrinks, Dr. 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
Download or read book Rare Diseases and Orphan Products written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-04-03 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.
Download or read book The Future of Public Health written by Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1988-01-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.
