Showing titles in History & Commentary

Always help, or at least do no harm." Following this simple yet revolutionary idea, Hippocrates laid the foundation for modern medicine over two millennia ago. From the Hippocratic Oath to the human genome, from Pasteur's germ theory to the worldwide eradication of smallpox, Medical Firsts brings to life 2,500 years of medical advances and discoveries. Organized chronologically, the book describes each milestone in a vivid capsule history, making it a fascinating and wonderfully listenable resource for anyone interested in medicine's past progress and future promise.

In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names - and opened their pocketbooks - in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?

Human history hinges on the battle to confront our most dangerous enemies—the half-dozen diseases responsible for killing almost all of mankind. The story of our medical triumphs reveals an inspiring tapestry of human achievement, but the journey was far from smooth. It is a tale replete with dramatic episodes as spellbinding as any blockbuster Hollywood movie. In The Masters of Medicine, Dr. Andrew Lam, an award-winning author and retinal surgeon, distills the long arc of medical progress down to the crucial moments that were responsible for the world's greatest medical miracles.

For the last two centuries, groups of influential men have, in the professed interest of fiscal responsibility, crime reduction, and outright racism, attempted to control who was allowed to bear children. Their efforts, "eugenics," characterize a movement that over the last century swept across the world—from the US to Brazil, Japan, India, Australia, and beyond—in the form of marriage restrictions, asylum detention, and sterilization campaigns affected millions. German physicians and scientists adopted and then heightened these eugenics practices beginning in 1939.

The Immune Mystery follows doctor and researcher Anita Kåss' quest to solve the autoimmune puzzle, beginning with the premature death of her mother, who developed rheumatoid arthritis shortly after giving birth to Anita. As a child, Anita vowed to study the illness and one day find a cure. Becoming a respected doctor and researcher, Anita devoted herself to studying autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. A compelling blend of incredible determination and cutting-edge science, this book changes the way we think about autoimmune diseases.

For centuries, people have talked of a powerful bodily disorder called migraine, which currently affects about a billion people around the world. Yet until now, the rich history of this condition has barely been told. In Migraine, award-winning historian Katherine Foxhall reveals the ideas and methods that ordinary people and medical professionals have used to describe, explain, and treat migraine since the Middle Ages.

Bradwel reminds us that the centenary of this apparent "wonder drug" should be no cause for celebration. Insulin often remains inaccessible to those who need it most: elusive prescriptions, uneven availability and sky-high prices result in rationing and desperate do-it-yourself research and development. In the face of bootstraps rhetoric and "Pharma Bro" capitalists, patients across the world are left to fend for themselves. There is a long way to go in the twenty-first century until insulin truly fulfills the extraordinary promises made by its discovery.

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.

For much of recorded history, people considered the heart to be the most important organ in the body. In cultures around the world, the heart—not the brain—was believed to be the location of intelligence, memory, emotion, and the soul. Over time, views on the purpose of the heart have transformed. Modern medicine and science dismissed what was once the king of the organs as a mere blood pump subservient to the brain, yet the heart remains a potent symbol of love and health and an important part of our cultural iconography.

Award-winning New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reflects on twenty-five years of covering pandemics—how governments react to them, how the media covers them, how they are exploited, and what we can do to prepare for the next one—in this “fascinating, ferocious fusillade against...

Vaccines are a debate, whether we want them to be or not. With a clear-eyed approach to their science and history, How Vaccines Work demystifies the strange and intricate world of vaccines: it explains what a vaccine is, how they are developed and what happens when they meet our bodies.

Medical historian Sally Sheard reveals the heroic characters and incredible innovations that have shaped our NHS. On 5th July 1948, for the first time anywhere in the world, healthcare in Britain became free for all. Sally Sheard looks at the highs and lows that followed the launch of the National Health Service - and describes what life was like before it. Drawing on unique archive recordings of staff, patients and politicians, including visionary NHS founders William Beveridge and Aneurin Bevan, she tells the stories behind 20 key moments in the history of the NHS.

A doctor reflects on his profession and his experience with patients in this brilliant essay collection that expands on his wildly popular Twitter poems. In medicine, every patient presents with a story. “Once upon a time I was well, and then . . . ” These patient narratives are the beating...

In 1932, the US Public Health Service recruited 623 African American men from Macon County, Alabama, for a study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male". For the next 40 years - even after the development of penicillin, the cure for syphilis - these men were denied medical care for this potentially fatal disease. 

For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin - a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed 10 million lives worldwide.  

With honesty, humility, and a commitment to the health and well-being of all children, Between a Shot and a Hard Place challenges the polarizing rhetoric and offers a path forward—one that respects individual choices while fostering informed, thoughtful dialogue.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand...

Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing draws on the findings of a unique clinical study that has focused on the health of more than four hundred women in their mid-to-late lives. Over the past thirty years a team of international investigators has compiled a remarkable amount of data, aiming to raise awareness of modifiable risk factors in women’s health.

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale's contributions to the care of soldiers in the Crimean War transformed hospitals from crucibles of infection to sanctuaries of recuperation. Yet histories of individual innovators ignore many key sources of medical knowledge.

Medical science has made brilliant discoveries over the last century but as any cancer patient can attest, it has yet to conquer, or even fully comprehend, pain. Beginning with his own battle against severe migraines, and citing numerous case studies of his patients, in Why We Hurt Dr. Frank Vertosick explains how pain evolved, and by highlighting the critical functions it serves, he helps us to understand its value.