Health Care History

The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorized and understood. A century on, their conceptions of mental illness continue to influence our views today. Beliefs and behavior were divided up into the pathological and the healthy. The influence of religion and the supernatural became significant measures of insanity in individuals, countries, and cultures. Troubled by Faith explores these ideas about the supernatural across society through the prism of medical history.

JAK UPÓR I TROCHĘ SZCZĘŚCIA ZMIENIŁY ŚWIAT Czy wiesz, że: miniaturowy odłamek plastiku w oku pilota RAF-u sprawił, że dziś używamy tego materiału do produkcji sztucznych soczewek; tytanowa komora, która za nic nie dawała usunąć się z kości królika, doprowadziła do powstania implantów dentystycznych; viagrę zawdzięczamy grupie chemików pracujących nad nowym lekiem mającym przynieść ulgę cierpiącym z powodu dusznicy bolesnej; pięć wyjątkowo ciepłych tygodni 1928 roku pomogło Alexandrowi Flemingowi w odkryciu penicyliny.

The Right to Pain Relief and Other Deep Roots of the Opioid Epidemic offers a new lens through which to view the opioid epidemic as a consequence of serious misunderstandings of both opioids and pain. Based on their extensive research and experience with chronic pain care, science, ethics, and policy, the authors look beyond the usual villains—pharmaceutical companies and pharmacotherapy distributors—to examine the ethical and scientific concepts about pain that made the opioid epidemic possible.

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Habit Forming traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried Hasheesh Candy, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction.

Dr. Sartor wrote an inspiring first-person account of how he treated more than 1,000 patients—and by his reckoning, lost only five—which lay forgotten in a lockbox of family artifacts until it was discovered decades later by his granddaughter, Beth Obermeyer, a journalist and author of three previous books. Beth knew her grandfather through her teenage years and grew up absorbing family stories. Based upon Dr. Sartor’s memoir and her years of research, she vividly reconstructs his life from childhood in Luxembourg to medical school in Chicago, courtship and marriage.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the preeminent medical schools in the nation today, has played a unique role in the history of medicine. When it first opened its doors in 1893, medicine was a rough-and-ready trade. It would soon evolve into a rigorous science. In recent years, medical science has mapped the human genome, deployed robotic tools to perform delicate surgeries, and developed effective vaccines against a host of deadly pathogens. But this transformation could not have happened without the game-changing vision, talent, and dedication of a small cadre of individuals.

Lindsey Fitzharris' Buch "Der Horror der frühen Medizin" war ein internationaler Erfolg, wurde in 15 Sprachen übersetzt und stand 19 Wochen lang auf der SPIEGEL-Bestsellerliste. Mit ihrem neuen Hörbuch entführt uns die Autorin zu den grausigen Anfänge der Schönheitschirurgie: Als Harold Gillies die Verheerungen des Ersten Weltkriegs mit eigenen Augen sieht, ist er schockiert. Zu viele junge Männer werden nach nur einem falschen Augenblick ihrem Schicksal überlassen: für immer entstellt, für immer Monster in den Augen der Gesellschaft.

Von den antiken Anfängen der Medizin bis in die Gegenwart, von der "wandernden Gebärmutter" bis zur Entdeckung von Autoimmunerkrankungen und Endometriose: Die englische Feministin Elinor Cleghorn präsentiert eine bahnbrechende und aufwühlende Kulturgeschichte über das Verhältnis von Frauen, Krankheit und Medizin. Elinor Cleghorn, selbst an der Autoimmunerkrankung Lupus erkrankt, hat sich nach einer nervenaufreibenden Diagnose-Odyssee auf die Suche nach den Wurzeln der patriarchalen Mythen begeben, die unsere westliche Medizin bis heute prägen.

Detrás de cada fármaco se esconde una historia. Puede ser la de un investigador excéntrico que resultó ser un genio, un momento decisivo en la historia geopolítica, un nuevo avance tecnológico o un inesperado pero afortunado efecto secundario descubierto en un ensayo clínico. A través de datos curiosos, anécdotas poco conocidas y personajes un tanto extravagantes, Thomas Hager propone un recorrido por las diez drogas más significativas de la historia a la vez que muestra la evolución de nuestra cultura y práctica de la medicina.

Ein einzigartiges Hörbuch, das Sie nicht gleichgültig lassen wird! Von den dunklen Anfangszeiten der Chirurgie, als noch ohne Betäubung amputiert wurde, über königliche Operationen bis zu den heutigen High-Tech-OPs – der Chirurg Arnold van de Laar beschreibt in seinem Hörbuch so packend wie allgemeinverständlich die Geschichte der Chirurgie, und gibt einen spannenden Einblick in sein Fach. In 28 Kapiteln erzählt van de Laar anhand berühmter Operationen, was genau im Operationsaal geschieht.

The digital tools available to every patient today enable you to better monitor and manage your health and improve your outcomes. From better medical adherence and effective communication with your providers, to how to use wearables; from clear detail about how your smartphone can check your vitals and sound advice on which websites offer reliable health information, this book provides the listener with a vital resource when interacting with our confusing healthcare system.

It’s hard today to remember how recently cancer was a silent killer, a dreaded disease about which people rarely spoke in public. In hospitals and doctors’ offices, conversations about malignancy were hushed and hope was limited. In this deeply researched book, Elaine Schattner reveals a sea change—from before 1900 to the present day—in how ordinary people talk about cancer. From Whispers to Shouts examines public perception of cancer through stories in newspapers and magazines, social media, and popular culture.

When the SARS virus broke out in China in January 2003, Karl Taro Greenfeld was the editor of Time Asia in Hong Kong, just a few miles from the epicenter of the outbreak. After vague, initial reports of terrified Chinese boiling vinegar to "purify" the air, Greenfeld and his staff soon found themselves immersed in the story of a lifetime. Deftly tracking a mysterious viral killer, China Syndrome takes listeners on a gripping ride that blows through the Chinese government's effort to cover up the disease and sounds a clarion call warning of a catastrophe to come.

At its core, American Disgust wrestles with how changing cultural notions of digestion-what goes into the body and what comes out of it-create and impose racial categories motivated by feelings of disgust rooted in American settler-colonial racism. It shows how disgust is a changing, yet fundamental, aspect of American subjectivity and that engaging with it-personally, politically, and theoretically-opens up possibilities for conceptualizing health at the individual, societal, and planetary levels.

Jim Geraghty has been a passionate participant in the orphan drug revolution since its inception―a leader in the field as a strategy consultant, biotechnology executive, and venture entrepreneur. His book is in part a history, with eyewitness accounts of advances as they occurred and portraits of the pioneering scientists and physicians, tireless activists, and visionary business leaders who made the revolution happen. And it tells deeply personal stories of patients and parents willing to risk untried new therapies.

Em 1918, um novo vírus de influenza, até então restrito às aves, passou a se manifestar também em humanos. Um ano mais tarde, o saldo era de pelo menos 100 mil mortos daquela que ficaria conhecida na história como gripe espanhola, marcando o primeiro grande embate entre a ciência e uma pandemia. Em apenas dois anos o vírus matou mais pessoas do que a Aids em todo o mundo ao longo dos 24 anos desde a sua descoberta, e mais pessoas em um ano do que a peste negra ao longo de um século.

Quando Jennifer Doudna ainda cursava a sexta série, encontrou em sua cama um exemplar de A dupla hélice, de James Watson, deixado por seu pai. Avançando pelas páginas, Doudna ficou fascinada com os bastidores da competição científica pela descoberta dos tijolinhos que constroem a vida. Motivada pela paixão de entender o funcionamento da natureza e por transformar descobertas em invenções práticas, Doudna ajudaria a realizar aquilo que o próprio James Watson, um dos descobridores da estrutura do DNA, classificara como o próximo avanço científico mais importante da biologia.

Em Medicina dos horrores, a historiadora Lindsey Fitzharris narra como era o chocante mundo da cirurgia do século XIX, que estava às vésperas de uma profunda transformação. A autora evoca os primeiros anfiteatros de operações—lugares abafados onde os procedimentos eram feitos diante de plateias lotadas—e cirurgiões pioneiros, cujo ofício era saudado não pela precisão, mas pela velocidade e pela força bruta, uma vez que não havia anestesia. Não à toa, os mais célebres cirurgiões da época eram capazes de amputar uma perna em menos de trinta segundos.

In this narrative history of the US through major outbreaks of contagious disease, from yellow fever to the Spanish flu, from HIV/AIDS to Ebola, Polly J. Price examines how law and government affected the outcome of epidemics—and how those outbreaks in turn shaped our government. Price presents a fascinating history that has never been fully explored and draws larger conclusions about the gaps in our governmental and legal response.

No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school.