Modern Medicine

An acclaimed medical expert and patient advocate offers an eye-opening look at many common and widely used medical interventions that have been shown to be far more harmful than helpful. Yet, surprisingly, despite clear evidence to the contrary, most doctors continue to recommend them.

This comprehensive guide offers detailed and easy-to-follow instructions for making and using approximately 250 all-natural DIY herbal medicines. With advice on herbal preparations for 100+ illnesses and conditions and a comprehensive materia medica, The Modern Herbal Dispensatory is an enduring classic and beloved plant-medicine reference manual for herbalists, natural medicine practitioners, and anyone seeking safe, holistic, at-home care and inexpensive all-natural remedies.

The New York Times best-selling author of Fat Chance explains the eight pathologies that underlie all chronic disease, documents how processed food has impacted them to ruin our health, economy, and environment over the past 50 years, and proposes an urgent manifesto and strategy to cure both us and the planet.

Modern medical science has finally caught up to what traditional healing systems have known for centuries. Many traditional healing techniques and medicines are often assumed to be archaic, outdated, or unscientific compared to modern Western medicine. Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic physician and member of the Deninu K'ue First Nation, analyzes modern Western medical practices using evidence-informed Indigenous healing practices and traditions from around the world - from sweat lodges and fermented foods to Ayurvedic doshas and meditation.

In medicine, machines can be used to take detailed pictures of bones and even to save people’s lives. Listen to learn about the marvelous machines of modern medicine, like the defibrillator, the x-ray machine, and more!

For many of the 40 million Americans who undergo anesthesia each year, it is a source of great fear and fascination. In Counting Backwards, Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo - an anesthesiologist with more than 30 years of experience - has written an unforgettable account of the routine procedure's daily dramas and fundamental mysteries. Przybylo has administered anesthesia more than 30,000 times in his career - erasing consciousness, denying memory, and immobilizing the body before reversing all of these effects.

Written by an author with plenty of experience holding a scalpel, Dr. David Schneider's in-depth biography is an encompassing history of the practice that has leapt forward over the centuries from the dangerous guesswork of ancient Greek physicians through the world-changing implant revolution of the 20th century.

You have been breathing your whole life; now, learn how to breathe better to positively influence your mental and physical well-being. This book is exactly what it says it is - a practical guide. Nothing esoteric. Nothing “woo woo”. What you will find in this book can be applied today in a real way to improve your life. Learn how to use your breath to communicate to your physiology and psychology in predictable and replicable ways using nothing more than focused conscious breathing.

This user-friendly guide gives straightforward and practical advice to anyone who wants a holistic approach to taking care of themselves naturally. Following the traditional framework of an anatomy book that explains each body system chapter-by-chapter, Pip Waller—an experienced practitioner and teacher—provides fundamental information and tips about exercise, diet, supplements, understanding and caring for your emotional and mental health, naturopathic principles from various traditions, and simple yet effective ways of working with spiritual energy.

In the widening grey zone between life and death, doctors fight with doctors, families feel pressured to make tough decisions about their loved ones and lawyers are left to argue life-and-death cases in the courts. Meanwhile, intensive care patients are caught in purgatory, attached to machines and unable to speak for themselves. In Death Interrupted, Dr Blair Bigham seeks to help listeners understand the options facing them at the end of their lives.

"I am a doctor." Every year, thousands of medical school graduates utter these four simple words. But as you will hear in Playing God, earning an MD is just the first step to becoming a real physician. In this thrilling and moving memoir, Dr. Anthony Youn reveals that the true metamorphosis from student to doctor occurs not in medical school but in the formative years of residency training and early practice. Here, you will take a journey through the world of surgery, hospitals, and the practice of medicine unlike any that you have traveled before.

In the late 1800s, a new disease arrived in North America from Europe and began to claim the lives of children everywhere. Though most today have never even heard of this illness, it would routinely kill over 10,000 children in a single year - more than the polio might take in an entire decade. After much trial and tribulation, a shot was developed that helped both those already afflicted with the illness, and those who might one day become infected. But the shot was dangerous, and many parents refused it for their children.

Cluster headache, a diagnosis sometimes referred to as a ‘suicide headache,’ is widely considered the most severe pain disorder that humans experience. There is no cure, and little funding available for research into developing treatments. When Joanna Kempner met Bob Wold in 2012, she was introduced to a world beyond most people's comprehension—a clandestine network determined to find relief using magic mushrooms. These ‘Clusterbusters,’ a group united only by the internet and a desire to survive, decided to do the research that medicine left unfinished.

Dive into the extraordinary life of Ibn Sina, a true polymath whose contributions to medicine, philosophy, psychology, and astronomy have left an indelible mark on the world. "Father of Modern Medicine: Ibn Sina" is an engaging and educational journey designed for young listeners aged 8-12, celebrating the brilliance and curiosity of one of history's greatest minds.

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that teaches us to act depending on what is within our control and separate things worth getting upset about from those that are not.

By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously?

In Modern Mindfulness, Rohan Gunatillake argues that to lead more mindful, calm, and happy lives, switching off is the last thing we need to do. Instead he gives listeners ideas, principles, and techniques to bring awareness, composure, and kindness to whatever they are doing. Filled with over 60 practical exercises, the author's mobile mindfulness approach gives the benefits of meditation to even the busiest of lives.

Praised for his erudite writing, renowned scientist Frank Gonzalez-Crussi penned this concise history of medicine, beginning with the most primitive health-care practices and ending with the technology of modern medicine that we enjoy today. As with all Modern Library Chronicles, A Short History of Medicine is a wonderful primer for anyone interested in the subject.

Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not. But for thousands of years, people have done things like this - and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare. And some of the terrifying detours along the way.

In The Great American Health Hoax, Francis exposes the truth about how to stay healthy and introduces us to a way of life that can become a "highway to health", while he quite effectively demonstrates that we really don't have to be sick. Then, he reminds us that not only is there absolutely no fun in being sick, but we are going broke trying to pay the cost. Francis realizes that the only solution for individuals and society as a whole is to maintain health.