Health Care History

Although Professor Stephen Westaby was born with the necessary coordination and manual dexterity, it was a head trauma sustained during university that gifted him the qualities of an exceptional heart surgeon: qualities that are frequently associated with psychopathy. His 35-year career has been characterised by fearlessness and ruthless ambition, leaving empathy at the hospital door as thousands of patients put their lives in his hands.

We have entered what is called the "biological century" and a new biopolitics has emerged to address the implications for America's collective value system, our well-being, and ultimately, our future. The Body Politic is the first book to recognize and assess this new force in our political landscape - one that fuels today's culture wars and has motivated politicians of all stripes to reexamine their platforms.

magine a healthcare system that thrives and listens, instead of dismisses. Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan believes such a healthcare system can exist, and using her experience as doctor, researcher, and patient, she gives her prescription for change, showing what can happen if we just listen. In Unheard, Dr Dhairyawan takes us on a journey through history to show how not listening to patients has been ingrained in the story of medicine.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on people worldwide. The death tolls, the economic disruptions, the impact on our children’s education, and the extended periods of social and physical distancing have left us feeling demoralized, exhausted, angry, and burned out. Breaking Canadians brings together health care experts, community advocates, and average citizens from across Canada to offer a unique analysis of the first three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

O medo envolve esta praga a partir do nome: lepra. Para vencê-lo, foi necessário vencer a palavra, substituindo-a por "hanseníase" no Brasil a partir dos anos 1960. Palavra que carrega um significado de pavor e isolamento inumano desde milênios, atravessando a Bíblia, a história do Oriente Médio, da Ásia e da Europa, atingindo indiferentemente reis e pobres da mais baixa classe, ela abriga uma doença que passou a ter cura nos anos 1940. Mas o Brasil, com seu atraso científico e social, ignorou ou subestimou isso.

Wie kommt die Energie vom Müsli in die Muskeln? Und warum vergessen wir ständig, wo unser Schlüssel liegt? Unser Körper ist für uns selbstverständlich, und doch wissen wir oft nicht, wie er funktioniert. Der Tiktoker und Medizinstudent Matthias Schuberth schaut auf alltägliche Situationen und erklärt dabei, was in uns vorgeht, wenn wir lernen, Sport treiben, uns verlieben oder traurig sind. Mit Humor und kreativen Vergleichen erzählt er in kleinen Geschichten, wie großartig unser Körper ist.

Since 2010, it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this technological breakthrough there has emerged a movement to use this information to help prospective parents "eliminate preventable genetic disease". As the prospect of systematically excluding the appearance of unwanted mutations in our children comes within reach, David B. Goldstein examines the possible consequences from these types of choices.

A Healthy Society offers a new approach to politics–and a new approach to building a healthier world. Dr. Meili argues that health delivery too often focuses on treatment of immediate causes and ignores fundamental conditions that lead to poor health such as income, education, employment, housing, and environment.

Richard Schweid examines home health care in detail, focusing on the women who tend to our elderly and disabled loved ones and how we fail to value their work. They are paid minimum wage so that we might be absent, getting on with our own lives. The book calls for a rethinking of home health care and explains why changes are urgent: the current system offers neither a good way to live nor a good way to die.

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.

In 2006, the Wall Street pioneer and philanthropist Ray Chambers flicked through some holiday snapshots taken by a friend and remarked on the placid beauty of a group of sleeping Malawian children. "They're not sleeping," his friend told him. "They're in malarial comas. A few days later, they were all dead." This moment sparked Chambers' determination to coordinate an unprecedented, worldwide effort to eradicate a disease that has haunted humanity since before the advent of medicine.

In the 16th century, when explorers travelled deep into the jungles of South America in search of gold and spices, they brought back many colourful tales of their adventures. None of these tales was more astonishing, or caused more concern, than that of the mystical properties of the substance with which the natives anointed their darts and arrows.

Women physicians in 19th-century America faced a unique challenge in gaining acceptance to the medical field as it began its transformation into a professional institution. The profession had begun to increasingly insist on masculine traits as signs of competency. Not only were these traits inaccessible to women according to 19th-century gender ideology, but showing competence as a medical professional was not enough.

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 16th-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants - uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places.

What is embryonic stem cell research? Why is it so controversial? What is its relationship to human cloning? Events are moving so fast and biotechnology seems so complicated that many of us don't have an informed opinion about issues that are remaking the human future before our very eyes.

How to Survive a Plague by David France is the riveting, powerful and profoundly moving story of the AIDS epidemic and the grass-roots movement of activists, many of them facing their own life-or-death struggles, who grabbed the reins of scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease.

This book is a story book about the eye. After some 60 years in eye research and clinical work in ophthalmology there have been many instances, where I remember patients and their problems, a book I read or a place that I traveled. This book has 30 chapters and the only thing they have in common, other than all having the same writer is that all have something to do with the eye or eye associated structures such as the eye muscles. None of the chapters are meant to be clinical reports; all are stories and I have tried to keep the text understandable.

Explore em Vírus que nos assombram a aterradora disseminação dos maiores vírus que marcaram a história recente da saúde global. De epidemias devastadoras a pandemias que pararam o mundo, a obra revela o impacto dos microrganismos mais temidos, detalhando como surgiram, se espalharam e foram combatidos. Com particularidades científicas e históricas, conheça os desafios enfrentados por médicos e pesquisadores na batalha para conter essas ameaças invisíveis.

Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-20th century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for treating mental health problems. After a decades-long hiatus, researchers are once again testing how effective these drugs are in relieving symptoms for a wide variety of psychiatric conditions, from depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder to posttraumatic stress disorder and substance addiction.

Psychiatrist Dr Mark Cross has spent most of his adult life working in the mental health system. He also suffers from anxiety, as do three out of four Australians at some point in their lives, so he knows first-hand the challenges, successes and failures facing consumers, patients and professionals. What he has discovered is that while Australia’s physical health system is world-renowned, its mental health system falls miserably short.