Medical Technology

In this compelling memoir, Jane Hawking relates the inside story of her extraordinary marriage. As Stephen's academic renown soared, his body was collapsing under the assaults of motor neurone disease, and Jane's candid account of trying to balance his 24-hour care with the needs of their growing family is inspirational. This is a book about optimism, love and change that will resonate with listeners everywhere.

Technological innovation is deeply woven into the fabric of American culture, and is no less a basic feature of American health care. Medical technology saves lives and relieves suffering, and is enormously popular with the public, profitable for doctors, and a source of great wealth for industry. Yet its costs are rising at a dangerously unsustainable rate. The control of technology costs poses a terrible ethical and policy dilemma. How can we deny people what they may need to live and flourish?

When celebrated neuropsychologist Paul Broks' wife died of cancer, it sparked a journey of grief and reflection that traced a lifelong attempt to understand how the brain gives rise to the soul. The result of that journey is a gorgeous, evocative meditation on fate, death, consciousness, and what it means to be human. The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars weaves a scientist’s understanding of the mind - its logic, its nuance, how we think about what makes a person - with a poet’s approach to humanity, that crucial and ever-elusive why.

In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death. When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during open-heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be.

Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools - or even wash his hands. This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the middle of the 19th century. Although he died at just 48, Mütter was an audacious medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time.

Salk became a cultural hero and icon for a whole generation. Now, at the fiftieth anniversary of the first national vaccination program, and as humanity is tantalizingly close to eradicating polio worldwide, comes this unforgettable chronicle. Salk's work was an unparalleled achievement, and it makes for a magnificent listen.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

Dr. Aaron Berkowitz had just finished his neurology training when he was sent to Haiti on his first assignment with Partners in Health. There, he meets Janel, a 23-year-old man with the largest brain tumor Berkowitz or any of his neurosurgeon colleagues at Harvard Medical School have ever seen. Determined to live up to Partners in Health’s mission statement “to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need”, Berkowitz tries to save Janel’s life by bringing him back to Boston for a 12-hour surgery.

The Secret Body is a gripping drama of discovery and a landmark account of the dawning revolution in human health that reveals a hitherto invisible universe within each of us.

Anyone who has seen a child recover from a wound or a broken bone knows that kids are made to heal. Their bodies are more resilient, more adaptive, and far more able to withstand acute stress than adults'. In this inspiring memoir, Dr. Kurt Newman draws from his long experience as a pediatric surgeon working at one of our nation's top children's hospitals to make the case that children are more than miniature adults.

San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.

Lawrence Weschler sets Oliver Sacks' brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief, casting himself as a beanpole Sancho to Sacks' capacious Quixote. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul.

In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world’s most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional.

In medical school, Paul Farmer found his life’s calling: To cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Tracy Kidder’s magnificent account shows how one person can make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease.

A Life in Trauma is a frank, remarkable account of a career spent helping others, offering a positive outlook on the potential of Ireland’s healthcare system in the future. Concern. Compassion. Doubt. Despair. Anger. Hope. Imagine juggling these feelings every day in a situation where your work could mean the difference between someone's life or death.

In a hidden base in China, Lieutenant General He Chen licks his wounds. The Devil Dragon project lies in ruins, thanks to the heroics of US Air Force Reserve Captain Ford Stevens and Stevens's best friend, pilot Wu Lee. But now Lee is gone, and as Stevens mourns the loss of his friend, Chen works to complete his second spy plane, codenamed Black Scorpion.

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree - becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree 31 years before women could vote and 35 years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice and then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people.

James Barry was one of the most outstanding doctors of the 19th century – a brilliant surgeon, a tireless campaigner for medical reform, and a compassionate Inspector-General of the Army. But throughout a long and distinguished career an air of secrecy, even of scandal, always clung to Barry. The shrill voice, the diminutive build, the almost ostentatious humanity – all struck a discordant note in the stiff, conventional world of the officers’ mess. Only after the doctor’s death in 1865 did the incredible truth come to light: Dr. James Barry was a woman.

Through his work in plastic and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Donald Laub changed the lives of thousands of people who had been shunned by society. His influence fostered the development of three key areas in the surgical profession: pioneering and influencing international humanitarian medical missions in the developing world, being at the forefront of gender affirmation surgery for transgender people since 1968, and the education and training of more than 50 plastic and reconstructive surgeons.

What if every business owner or manager could combine cutting-edge technology with the warmth of personal connection to keep customers coming back for more and sending their friends and family? Drawing lessons from the industry-leading business practices at One Medical, a brand transforming the customer experience in healthcare, All Business Is Personal gives readers tools to blend the powerful benefits of today’s rapidly improving technology with individuals’ unique talents, all in the name of providing only the best for their customers.