Download or read book The Mold in Dr Florey s Coat written by Eric Lax and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic, untold story of the discovery of the first wonder drug, the men who led the way, and how it changed the modern world In his wonderfully engaging book, acclaimed author Eric Lax tells the real story behind the discovery and why it took so long to develop the drug. He reveals the reasons why credit for penicillin was misplaced, and why this astonishing achievement garnered a Nobel Prize but no financial rewards for the doctor that discovered it and the team that developed it. Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in his London laboratory in 1928 ushered in a new age in medicine. But it took a team of Oxford scientists headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain four more years to develop it as the first antibiotic, and the most important family of drugs in the twentieth century. At once the world was transformed -- major bacterial scourges such as blood poisoning and pneumonia, scarlet fever and diphtheria, gonorrhea and syphilis were defeated. Penicillin helped to foster not only a medical revolution but a sexual one as well. The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat is the compelling story of the passage of medicine from one era to the next and of the eccentric individuals whose participation in this extraordinary accomplishment has, until now, remained largely unknown. "Admirable, superbly researched . . . perhaps the most exciting tale of science since the apple dropped on Newton's head." -- Simon Winchester, The New York Times
Download or read book Penicillin written by Robert Bud and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author sets the discovery and use of penicillin in the broader context of social and cultural changes across the world. He examines the drug's contributions to medicine and agriculture, and investigates the global spread of resistant bacteria as antibiotic use continues to rise.
Download or read book Big Chicken written by Maryn McKenna and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eye-opening exposé, acclaimed health journalist and National Geographic contributor Maryn McKenna documents how antibiotics transformed chicken from local delicacy to industrial commodity—and human health threat—uncovering the ways we can make America's favorite meat safer again. What you eat matters—for your health, for the environment, and for future generations. In this riveting investigative narrative, McKenna dives deep into the world of modern agriculture by way of chicken: from the farm where it's raised directly to your dinner table. Consumed more than any other meat in the United States, chicken is emblematic of today's mass food-processing practices and their profound influence on our lives and health. Tracing its meteoric rise from scarce treat to ubiquitous global commodity, McKenna reveals the astounding role of antibiotics in industrial farming, documenting how and why "wonder drugs" revolutionized the way the world eats—and not necessarily for the better. Rich with scientific, historical, and cultural insights, this spellbinding cautionary tale shines a light on one of America's favorite foods—and shows us the way to safer, healthier eating for ourselves and our children. In August 2019 this book will be published in paperback with the title Plucked: Chicken, Antibiotics, and How Big Business Changed the Way the World Eats.
Download or read book Miracle Cure written by William Rosen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic history of how antibiotics were born, saving millions of lives and creating a vast new industry known as Big Pharma. As late as the 1930s, virtually no drug intended for sickness did any good; doctors could set bones, deliver babies, and offer palliative care. That all changed in less than a generation with the discovery and development of a new category of medicine known as antibiotics. By 1955, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes had been transformed, trivializing once-deadly infections. William Rosen captures this revolution with all its false starts, lucky surprises, and eccentric characters. He explains why, given the complex nature of bacteria—and their ability to rapidly evolve into new forms—the only way to locate and test potential antibiotic strains is by large-scale, systematic, trial-and-error experimentation. Organizing that research needs large, well-funded organizations and businesses, and so our entire scientific-industrial complex, built around the pharmaceutical company, was born. Timely, engrossing, and eye-opening, Miracle Cure is a must-read science narrative—a drama of enormous range, combining science, technology, politics, and economics to illuminate the reasons behind one of the most dramatic changes in humanity’s relationship with nature since the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago.
Download or read book Assessment of Long Term Health Effects of Antimalarial Drugs When Used for Prophylaxis written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2020-04-24 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the many who serve in the United States Armed Forces and who are deployed to distant locations around the world, myriad health threats are encountered. In addition to those associated with the disruption of their home life and potential for combat, they may face distinctive disease threats that are specific to the locations to which they are deployed. U.S. forces have been deployed many times over the years to areas in which malaria is endemic, including in parts of Afghanistan and Iraq. Department of Defense (DoD) policy requires that antimalarial drugs be issued and regimens adhered to for deployments to malaria-endemic areas. Policies directing which should be used as first and as second-line agents have evolved over time based on new data regarding adverse events or precautions for specific underlying health conditions, areas of deployment, and other operational factors At the request of the Veterans Administration, Assessment of Long-Term Health Effects of Antimalarial Drugs When Used for Prophylaxis assesses the scientific evidence regarding the potential for long-term health effects resulting from the use of antimalarial drugs that were approved by FDA or used by U.S. service members for malaria prophylaxis, with a focus on mefloquine, tafenoquine, and other antimalarial drugs that have been used by DoD in the past 25 years. This report offers conclusions based on available evidence regarding associations of persistent or latent adverse events.
Download or read book The Fish Tales Complete 4 Book Set The Man I Love Give Me Your Answer True Here to Stay The Ones That Got Away written by Suanne Laqueur and published by Cathedral Rock Press. This book was released on 2017-07-24 with total page 1397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthology containing: The Fish Tales Omnibus The Ones That Got Away
Download or read book Healing Lyme Beyond Antibiotics written by Isabella S. Oehry and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HEALING LYME BEYOND ANTIBIOTICS Lyme disease is now the most common tick-borne disease in Europe, Asia, and the United States: according to the CDC, each year in the US alone there are an estimated 300, 000 cases of Lyme disease. As researchers work to find ways to combat Borrelia burgdorferi and other bacteria known to cause Lyme disease, practitioners of allopathic medicine currently have few options beyond antibiotics to offer patients. After becoming very ill with Lyme disease, unsuccessful treatments with antibiotics left Isa extremely weak, exhausted, unable to think clearly, or function normally. A chance remark by her niece about a natural remedy inspired Isa to investigate alternative healing methods. After an extensive search she found the treatment she needed and recovered fully. Healing Lyme Beyond Antibiotics tells the story of Isa’s successful recovery, but is more than a guide on how to cure oneself from Lyme disease by natural means. It also informs the reader about the bacteria that cause the illness, offers detailed information about bacterial hosts and reservoirs, and gives advice on how to protect oneself from getting infected. – a must read book for everyone afflicted with Lyme disease –
Download or read book The Foxfire Book written by Foxfire Fund, Inc. and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1972-02-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1972, The Foxfire Book was a surprise bestseller that brought Appalachia's philosophy of simple living to hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you wanted to hunt game, bake the old-fashioned way, or learn the art of successful moonshining, The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center had a contact who could teach you how with clear, step-by-step instructions. This classic debut volume of the acclaimed series covers a diverse array of crafts and practical skills, including log cabin building, hog dressing, basketmaking, cooking, fencemaking, crop planting, hunting, and moonshining, as well as a look at the history of local traditions like snake lore and faith healing.
Download or read book Superbugs written by Matt McCarthy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International Bestseller "An amazing, informative book that changes our perspective on medicine, microbes and our future." --Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies A New York Times bestselling author shares this exhilarating story of cutting-edge science and the race against the clock to find new treatments in the fight against the antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as superbugs. Physician, researcher, and ethics professor Matt McCarthy is on the front lines of a groundbreaking clinical trial testing a new antibiotic to fight lethal superbugs, bacteria that have built up resistance to the life-saving drugs in our rapidly dwindling arsenal. This trial serves as the backdrop for the compulsively readable Superbugs, and the results will impact nothing less than the future of humanity. Dr. McCarthy explores the history of bacteria and antibiotics, from Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, to obscure sources of innovative new medicines (often found in soil samples), to the cutting-edge DNA manipulation known as CRISPR, bringing to light how we arrived at this juncture of both incredible breakthrough and extreme vulnerability. We also meet the patients whose lives are hanging in the balance, from Remy, a teenager with a dangerous and rare infection, to Donny, a retired New York City firefighter with a compromised immune system, and many more. The proverbial ticking clock will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Can Dr. McCarthy save the lives of his patients infected with the deadly bacteria, who have otherwise lost all hope?
Download or read book Hallelujah Moments written by Eugene H. Cordes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This work provides eleven stories of drug discovery and features the scientists who made them. The outcome of the discovery work has provided novel therapies in cancer, cardiovascular medicine, antibacterial and antiviral infectious diseases, parasitic diseases, metabolic diseases, and weight control. Each story begins with the basic biomedical science that revealed the pathway to effective drug therapy and continues with the step-by-step process that leads from insight to a product in clinical practice meeting a defined medical need. The tales feature creative problem solving by clever and dedicated scientists as they overcame roadblocks to success., hallelujah moments. Each drug discovery story reflects the interface between basic science, medicine, and drug discovery. Embedded in these tales are the societal and medical environments in which drug discovery takes place, the discovery of agents to treat HIV/AIDS, for example. Finally, a series of appendices provides basic chemical background for non-scientists"--
Download or read book You Must Be This Happy to Enter written by Elizabeth Crane and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Crane seems to be carving out a younger, brassier, less dystopic territory to complement the fiction of George Saunders and David Foster Wallace.” —The Quarterly Conversation In her third short story collection, following When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory, Elizabeth Crane presents a quirky cast of characters all searching for, showing off, or seriously questioning what makes them happy. There’s a woman who speaks in all exclamation points, one enamored by her boyfriend’s closet, a zombie reality TV star, a mother whose baby turns into Ethan Hawke, and a woman whose moods are printed on her forehead. Whether breathlessly enthusiastic, serenely calm, or really concentrating right now on their issues, Elizabeth Crane’s characters shine a spotlight on our spirituality-starved, self-improvement-seeking, celebrity-obsessed culture. “In her third collection of inventive short stories, Crane continues to ingeniously satirize our muddled quest for meaning in all the wrong places.” —Booklist “A well-crafted collection of short stories, one whose clarity of tone and theme unites each and every piece into a cohesive whole. At a time when it seems almost antediluvian to be optimistic, Crane’s sincerity stands as a bewitching reminder that there is more to literature than tragedy.” —Bookslut “Zombies, time travelers, reality TV contestants and even a few normalish folks populate the pages of Elizabeth Crane’s quirky, charming new collection.” —PopMatters
Download or read book Alexander Fleming written by Gwyn Macfarlane and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1984 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Perfect Predator written by Steffanie Strathdee and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An electrifying memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life-and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more. "A memoir that reads like a thriller." -New York Times Book Review "A fascinating and terrifying peek into the devastating outcomes of antibiotic misuse-and what happens when standard health care falls short." -Scientific American Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world. Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center -- and together they resurrected a forgotten cure. A nail-biting medical mystery, The Perfect Predator is a story of love and survival against all odds, and the (re)discovery of a powerful new weapon in the global superbug crisis.
Download or read book The Mega Misconception Book written by James Egan and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on with total page 318 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 Biography of Resistance written by Muhammad H. Zaman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning Boston University educator and researcher Muhammad H. Zaman provides a chilling look at the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, explaining how we got here and what we must do to address this growing global health crisis. In September 2016, a woman in Nevada became the first known case in the U.S. of a person who died of an infection resistant to every antibiotic available. Her death is the worst nightmare of infectious disease doctors and public health professionals. While bacteria live within us and are essential for our health, some strains can kill us. As bacteria continue to mutate, becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, we are likely to face a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions. “It will be like the great plague of the middle ages, the influenza pandemic of 1918, the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, and the Ebola epidemic of 2014 all combined into a single threat,” Muhammad H. Zaman warns. The Biography of Resistance is Zaman’s riveting and timely look at why and how microbes are becoming superbugs. It is a story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. Following the trail of resistant bacteria from previously uncontacted tribes in the Amazon to the isolated islands in the Arctic, from the urban slums of Karachi to the wilderness of the Australian outback, Zaman examines the myriad factors contributing to this unfolding health crisis—including war, greed, natural disasters, and germophobia—to the culprits driving it: pharmaceutical companies, farmers, industrialists, doctors, governments, and ordinary people, all whose choices are pushing us closer to catastrophe. Joining the ranks of acclaimed works like Microbe Hunters, The Emperor of All Maladies, and Spillover, A Biography of Resistance is a riveting and chilling tale from a natural storyteller on the front lines, and a clarion call to address the biggest public health threat of our time.
Download or read book Shantaram written by Gregory David Roberts and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2004-10-13 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on his own extraordinary life, Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a mesmerizing novel about a man on the run who becomes entangled within the underworld of contemporary Bombay—the basis for the Apple + TV series starring Charlie Hunnam. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.