Medical Biography

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most recognizable structures to define a modern city. Yet, for author Kevin Hines the bridge is not merely a marker of a place or a time. Instead, the bridge marks the beginning of his remarkable story. At 19-years-old, Kevin attempted to take his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge - a distance which took four seconds to fall. Recently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, Kevin had begun to hear voices telling him he had to die, and days before his attempt, he began to believe them. The fall would break his body, but not his spirit.

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow.

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.

Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous–and most revered–doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in researching HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises, make him truly an American hero.

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival.

When Michael Collins decided to become a surgeon, he was totally unprepared for the chaotic life of a resident at a major hospital. A natural overachiever, Collins' success in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents, Collins felt inadequate and unprepared.

Dr Dave Walker was a successful anesthesiologist with a special interest in the intensive care unit (ICU). Disillusioned with God after a series of tragedies, he was living for himself and his work. Yet he longed for more than just physical healing for his patients, which set him on a quest to find a God who cared. After a dramatic encounter, he started praying with his patients.

Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism when she found an unexpected lifeline: a job at the Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City. The second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous—and she loved it. In What the Dead Know, she writes with the kind of New York attitude and bravado you might expect from decades in the field, investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides.

The inspiration for the BBC series of the same name. Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semiferal cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James find he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him.

At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.

In the early 1920s, when neurosurgery was more likely to be a death sentence than a cure, two men revolutionized the study of the brain: Wilder Penfield and William Cone. Drawn together by their shared fascination with the “undiscovered country” inside our heads, the surgeons formed a partnership and within ten years established the Montreal Neurological Institute in a Gothic stone hospital on the slope of a mountain. The Neuro soon became the world’s leading centre for neurological study, attracting men and women from across the globe to a booming mid-century city.

"I am a doctor." Every year, thousands of medical school graduates utter these four simple words. But as you will hear in Playing God, earning an MD is just the first step to becoming a real physician. In this thrilling and moving memoir, Dr. Anthony Youn reveals that the true metamorphosis from student to doctor occurs not in medical school but in the formative years of residency training and early practice. Here, you will take a journey through the world of surgery, hospitals, and the practice of medicine unlike any that you have traveled before.

In 1949, Ron Losee, a young Yale Medical School graduate, headed west with his wife and small daughter to begin the practice of medicine. They settled in Ennis, Montana, in a log cabin that also became their office and lab. Patients made themselves at home in the living room. One small bag held all their medical equipment. It was a proud moment when a patient first called Losee "Doc." His fee on that occasion was three dollars.

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world's most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients. For 50 years, generations of readers have flocked to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals, and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: World-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief.

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. Neurosurgeon Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress. Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back. Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere.

From the real-life Meredith Grey, comes an inspiring collection of essays based on Dr. Erin Nance’s popular TikTok account @littlemissdiagnosed, detailing Dr. Nance’s journey as a young female orthopedic surgeon navigating challenging cases and ethical dilemmas in the high-stakes, cutthroat world of medicine.

At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.

Peu de gens savent ce qui se passe réellement à l'arrière d'une ambulance. Martin Viau, paramédic, vous dirait que c'est très bien ainsi. Lui et ses collègues interviennent sur des corps amochés, parfois méconnaissables, retrouvés dans des circonstances souvent effroyables. Ils affrontent tous les jours la souffrance et parfois, presque régulièrement, la mort. Pourtant, un jour, Martin Viau a eu besoin de prendre du recul et de tout raconter, de lever le voile sur leur quotidien méconnu.