Health Care History

Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be "conquered" ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion.

The story of nursing is complicated. It is woven into war, plague, religion, the economy, and our individual lives in myriad ways. In Taking Care, journalist Sarah DiGregorio chronicles the lives of nurses past and tells the stories of those today—caregivers at the vital intersection of health care and community who are actively changing the world, often invisibly.

It is 1919 and Elizabeth Hughes, the 11-year-old daughter of America's most-distinguished jurist and politician, Charles Evans Hughes, has been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. It is essentially a death sentence. The only accepted form of treatment - starvation - whittles her down to 45 pounds, skin and bones. Miles away, Canadian researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best manage to identify and purify insulin from animal pancreases - a miracle soon marred by scientific jealousy, intense business competition, and fistfights.

In Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare’s Misinformation Illness, a team of health misinformation experts delivers a first-hand account of the dangers posed by false narratives and snake oil in the face of deadly healthcare crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic. In the book, you’ll explore the challenges facing those who fight to restore truth to a place of primacy in the United States healthcare system, the strategies they use, and the lessons you can draw from their real-world stories.

Dr. Lange graduated from medical school in 1981, right as a new plague swept across the globe. His story became intertwined with the story of HIV. At once a physician, scientist, AIDS activist, and medical diplomat, Lange studied ways to battle HIV and prevent its spread from mother to child. Fighting the injustices of poverty, Lange advocated for better access to health care for the poor and the vulnerable. The Impatient Dr. Lange is the story of one man's struggle against a global pandemic - and the tragic attack that may have slowed down the search for a cure.

Thought of as the seat of our soul, then as a mysteriously animated object, the heart is still more a mystery than it is understood. Why do most animals only get one billion beats? (And how did modern humans get to over two billion - effectively letting us live out two lives?) Why are sufferers of gingivitis more likely to have heart attacks? And what does it really feel like to touch your own heart, or to have someone else's beating inside your chest?

No disease sparked as much dread in the 18th century as smallpox. The virus killed millions across the globe, carrying off one in every five victims and disfiguring survivors with tell-tale pitted scars. But one mysterious method offered hope: inoculation, the practice of piercing the skin to insert a drop of infected matter and induce a mild case of smallpox. Those inoculated safely were protected from the ‘Speckled Monster’ and stayed immune for life. Only one problem remained: convincing people to accept the treatment.

In this astonishing book, Mark Woolhouse recounts the history of the COVID-19 pandemic through the eyes of a scientist at the very centre of the action. He explores the failures and successes of the United Kingdom’s, and the world’s, response to the virus, shows how he briefed both the British and Scottish governments on the scale of the fight ahead and candidly describes the challenges scientists faced when working with politicians.

For 4,000 years, the size and vitality of cities, economies, and empires were heavily determined by infection. Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion — quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles — resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world.

A riveting, fast-paced, inside look at one of the most incredible private sector achievements in history, Moonshot recounts the intensive nine months in 2020 when the scientists at Pfizer, under the visionary leadership of Dr. Albert Bourla, made “the impossible possible”—creating, testing, and manufacturing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine that previously would have taken years to develop. Dr. Bourla chronicles how the brilliant, dedicated minds at Pfizer overcame a series of crises that were compounded by social and political unrest.

A History of the Present Illness takes listeners into overlooked lives in the neighborhoods, hospitals, and nursing homes of San Francisco, offering a deeply humane and incisive portrait of health and illness in American today....In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese, Aronson's writing is based on personal experience and addresses topics of current social relevance. Masterfully told, A History of the Present Illness explores the role of stories in medicine and creates a world pulsating with life, speaking truths about what makes us human.

Still Not Safe is the story of the rise of the patient - safety movement - and how an "epidemic" of medical errors was derived from a reality that didn't support such a characterization. Physician Robert Wears and organizational theorist Kathleen Sutcliffe trace the origins of patient safety to the emergence of market trends that challenged the place of doctors in the larger medical ecosystem.

Notes on Nursing is a classic by Florence Nightingale (the first modern nurse). Florence Nightingale's methods were revolutionary in her time, and they form the basis for the techniques of patient management that have been taught ever since. Notes on Nursing is a great overview, in her own words, of Florence Nightingale's ideas on care, cleanliness, and the nursing process in general. Her directives are widely applicable today. First published in 1860, Notes on Nursing served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established.

Popular progressive radio host and New York Times best-selling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to establish affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world. But transplant surgery is as ancient as the pyramids, with a history more surprising than we might expect. Paul Craddock takes us on a journey—from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants—uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal, and machine.

Blood Runs Coal comes at a time of resurgent labor movements in the United States and the current administration's attempts to bolster the fossil-fuel industry. Brilliantly researched and compellingly written, it sheds light on the far-reaching effects of industrial and socioeconomic change that unfold across America to this day.

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?

Little more than 100 years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world's environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the 20th century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremes, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer.

Feeling feverish, tired, or achy? Listening to Gina Kolata's engrossing account of the 1918 Influenza epidemic is sure to give you the chills. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and considers what can be done to prevent it.

The "absorbing and powerful" (Wall Street Journal) story of two pioneering suffragette doctors who shattered social expectations and transformed modern medicine during World War I. In No Man's Land, Wendy Moore illuminates this turbulent moment of global war and pandemic when women were, for the first time, allowed to operate on men. Their fortitude and brilliance serve as powerful reminders of what women can achieve against all odds.