Medical Memoirs

In the aftermath of 9/11, Kevin Hazzard felt that something was missing from his life - his days were too safe, too routine. A failed salesman turned local reporter, he wanted to test himself, see how he might respond to pressure and danger. He signed up for emergency medical training and became, at age 26, a newly minted EMT running calls in the worst sections of Atlanta. His life entered a different realm - one of blood, violence, and amazing grace.

In this follow-up to the hugely popular Angels in the ER, Dr. Robert D. Lesslie shares more of his life-changing emergency-room encounters with nurses, doctors, patients, friends, and strangers who’ve served as God’s hands in the direst of circumstances. You’ll be deeply moved by these tales of both triumph and tragedy from the ER front line, as well as by the profound faith that has sustained Dr. Lesslie for more than 30 years on the job.

An exploration of vision through the case histories of six individuals - including a renowned pianist who continues to give concerts despite losing the ability to read the score, and a neurobiologist born with crossed eyes who, late in life, suddenly acquires binocular vision, and how her brain adapts to that new skill.

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis", the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis.

In the pursuit of possible links between childhood vaccines, intestinal inflammation, and neurologic injury in children, Wakefield lost his job in London’s Royal Free Hospital, his country of birth, his career, and his medical license. A recent General Medical Council ruling stated that he was “dishonest, irresponsible and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain of children.” Maligned by the medical establishment and mainstream media, Wakefield endeavors to set the record straight.

Karl Deisseroth has spent his life pursuing truths about the human mind, both as a renowned clinical psychiatrist and as a researcher creating and developing the revolutionary field of optogenetics, which uses light to help decipher the brain’s workings. In Projections, he combines his knowledge of the brain’s inner circuitry with a deep empathy for his patients to examine what mental illness reveals about the human mind and the origin of human feelings - how the broken can illuminate the unbroken.

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

"In 1960 I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some 'tests'. It took 10 minutes and cost 200 dollars." Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy of Sophoclean proportions.

When 22-year-old Jennifer Worth, from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, went to work as a midwife in the poorest section of postwar London, she not only delivered hundreds of babies and touched many lives, she also became the neighborhood's most vivid chronicler. Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End is the last book in Worth's memoir trilogy, which the Times Literary Supplement described as "powerful stories with sweet charm and controlled outrage" in the face of dire circumstances.

For Dr. Jessi Gold, everything was absolutely fine—until it suddenly wasn’t. As an assistant professor, practicing psychiatrist, university wellness leader, regular media expert, and dedicated friend and family member, Jessi was used to being constantly busy. After all, people—her patients, colleagues, and loved ones—needed her, so who was she to say no to any opportunity to help, be that an extra therapy session, corporate wellness talk, or favor for a friend. She was a doctor, trained to serve, to put the needs of others before her own.

We’ve all heard the phrase “it’s not brain surgery.” But what exactly is brain surgery? It’s a profession that is barely a hundred years old and profoundly connects two human beings, but few know how it works, or its history. In this warm, rigorous, and deeply insightful book, Dr. Theodore H. Schwartz explores what it’s like to hold the scalpel, wield the drill, extract a tumor, fix a bullet hole, and remove a blood clot—when every second can mean life or death.

In the spirit of Oliver Sacks Awakenings and the TV series House, Dr. Eric Manheimer's Twelve Patients is a memoir from the medical director of Bellevue Hospital that uses the plights of 12 very different patients - from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners from Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons - to illustrate larger societal issues.

Kristine Barnett’s son Jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein’s, a photographic memory, and he taught himself calculus in two weeks. At 9 he started working on an original theory in astrophysics that experts believe may someday put him in line for a Nobel Prize, and at age 12 he became a paid researcher in quantum physics. But the story of Kristine’s journey with Jake is all the more remarkable because his extraordinary mind was almost lost to autism. At age 2, when Jake was diagnosed, Kristine was told he might never be able to tie his own shoes.

With compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again.

In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.

A riveting and candid account of a young journalist's awakening to a life of chronic illness, weaving together her personal story with reporting to shed light on how Americans live with long-term diagnoses today.

In this powerful, wide-ranging, and emotional story about the limits of medical knowledge, Abel discovers why she wasn't diagnosed with celiac as a child. She considers how environmental fears and Internet anecdotes lead people to avoid gluten. And she grapples with the question that confronts us all: how to live calmly, even joyfully, in the face of uncertainty.

The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions.

Heartwarming and gloriously eccentric, Dr Tom's stories capture the beauty of the Lowlands, the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants and the richly rewarding experiences of life as a Scottish country doctor.

It has been said that everyone knows a cancer survivor, but no one has met an Alzheimer's survivor - until now. In his first two books, Dr. Dale Bredesen outlined the revolutionary treatments that are changing what had previously seemed like the inevitable outcome of cognitive decline and dementia. And in these moving narratives, you can hear directly from the first survivors of Alzheimer’s themselves - their own amazing stories of hope told in their own words.