Medical History

A meticulously reported, character-driven, unforgettable investigation of a time when nothing was certain and everything was at stake, by the acclaimed sociologist and best-selling author Eric Klinenberg “A gripping, deeply moving account of a signal year in modern history, told through the...

Pandemics have afflicted human civilizations throughout history, yet these health crises have also led to progress in medicine and society that improved people’s lives. History shows that scientific innovation often proceeds from the collaboration of researchers across disciplines, nations, and institutions.

The Plasma Pioneer reveals the remarkable true story of Charles Richard Drew, the African American physician whose scientific genius collided with the brutal realities of segregated America. When the U.S. military demanded that blood donations be segregated by race—despite Drew's own research proving the practice scientifically baseless—he made a decision that would define his legacy: he resigned from the program he created rather than compromise his principles.

How hard-working individuals have kept abortion afloat in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s destruction, and the continued help needed if we want to sustain it When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, many feared it meant the end of abortion access in the United States. Yet the...

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub A leading microbiologist tackles the scientific and sociopolitical impact of viruses in twelve striking essays. Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish—with the power to shape not only...

In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They became obsessed with identifying weak or tainted families and anticipating the outcomes of their marriages.

People have always traveled for health, but as industrial pollution increased in nineteenth-century Britain, doctors started ordering their patients abroad in ever-growing numbers. This work explores the intensity and sheer strangeness of life in these colonies, governed by illness, but where patients (before the rise of the sanatorium) could move around freely, and even indulge in winter sports. Focusing on Menton on the Riviera and Davos in the Swiss Alps, from the 1860s to the 1920s, In Quest of a Cure explores the literary and medical cultures of these resorts.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A “mesmerizing” (The New York Times Book Review) true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change your notions of how we punish and how we heal—an expansion on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of...

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.

Auf der ganzen Welt lernen Ärzte und Ärztinnen von echten Krankheiten und Patienten. Sie lernen, wie sich Symptome äußern und wie man sie lindern oder sogar heilen kann. Manche dieser Fälle und Menschen sind so besonders, dass sie in die Geschichte eingehen. Im zweiten Band Rätselhafte Fälle der Medizingeschichte lädt Autor und Arzt Roy Benaroch wieder ein, mit ihm zusammen auf Spurensuche zu gehen. Anhand historischer Quellen zeichnet er das Leben bekannter historischer Persönlichkeiten nach und fahndet nach Hinweisen zu ihren Krankheiten und Symptomen.

The fierce, bloody battles of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines are legendary in the annals of World War II. Those who survived faced the horrors of life as prisoners of the Japanese. In Conduct Under Fire, John A. Glusman chronicles these events through the eyes of his father and three...

From the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling The Shape of Water comes the “utterly riveting” (Entertainment Weekly) tale of a murdered teen who is resurrected to walk the earth for more than a century. May 7, 1896. Dusk. A swaggering seventeen-year-old gangster named Zebulon Finch is...

The inspiring stories of 6 people who changed history. Contents: Edward Jenner, the man who fought the terrible disease, smallpox Florence Nightingale, the nurse known as ‘the lady with the lamp’ Elizabeth Garrett, England’s first female doctor Carl Jung, the doctor who wanted to...

The Healing Cell is an easy to read, carefully researched, and clear-eyed view of medicine many decades in the making that is now paying off with treatments that repair damaged hearts, restore sight, kill cancer, cure diabetes, heal burns, and stop the march of such degenerative diseases as...

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control.

How a miracle treatment turned deadly and changed the course of the AIDS crisis. By the mid 1980s, AIDS hysteria was so rampant that a fearful and prejudiced public ignored stories of gay men falling ill with lesions and mouth ulcers. President Reagan avoided mentioning the disease entirely...

A life-saving and empowering guide to understanding breast cancer detection, prevention, and treatment options, from two top doctors in the field—Rachel Brem, a breast radiologist, and Christy Teal, a breast surgeon—who have also made the personal decisions to have mastectomies. No Longer...

Due to horrible physical deformities, he spent much of his life as a fairground freak. He was hounded, persecuted, and starving, until his fortune changed and he was rescued, housed, and fed by the distinguished surgeon, Frederick Treves. The subject of several books, a Broadway hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become part of popular mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing much fresh information, are the true and un-romanticized facts of his life.

'What is your name?' she asks, staring at me. 'Jennifer Ross.' 'Jennifer Ross, Sister. Well, Nurse Ross, you are dressed in the uniform of a nurse from the Leeds General Infirmary. Such a uniform is not worn with a cardigan. Take it off at once.' 'Yes Sister.' I can feel my face turn red. A...