Medicine Century

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.

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.

David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

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.

A MUST-READ SEQUEL TO THE AWARD-WINNING NOVEL, "THE BOUNDARY STONE." In this gripping follow up to “The Boundary Stone,” Lady Catherine Abbott’s life takes an unexpected turn when an abused young woman forces her to examine the privileges of 17th century aristocratic English society, the roles of women, and her own place in the world. Determined to discover the mysteries of the human body, daring physick, Simon McKensie, fights once more against superstition, ignorance and the vast, unknown boundaries of science when he creates a remarkable experiment that could change the very course...

Americans are in the midst of a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics—across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?

The Longevity Solution explains how to incorporate time-honored wellness traditions while doing away with fads, unnecessary supplements, and unsubstantiated wellness practices. It investigates the dietary habits and other practices of the healthiest, longest-lived humans on the planet, who live in regions known as Blue Zones, as a model for what and how we should eat. It teaches the benefits of intermittent fasting and calorie restriction, which have been shown to slow the aging process, while consuming proper ratios of protein and healthy fats.

The 21st century has brought with it unprecedented challenges. Health and environmental effects of toxins introduced in the last half century have led to reductions in life expectancy, reproductive health, and quality of life and increases in anti-nutrients, loss of quality soil, impaired immune defense and repair, and digestive disorders.

Written by an elite team of 60 doctors and men’s health experts, The 21st Century Man reveals insider secrets that men in midlife and beyond need to recover, rebuild, and maintain their physical, mental, emotional, and sexual health. It's the book all men will want after turning 40 to feel great, look good, and have better physical intimacy for the rest of their lives. This selection provides common-sense measures men can take to minimize infectious illness, prevent injury to their back and hands, avoid hearing problems, practice good foot care, and optimize their sleep.

What did 19th-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the 19th-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth.

If you find the American healthcare system complicated and confusing, you’re not the only one. Our goal is to make your life a little easier by taking a fresh look at choosing a good doctor, making the most of the time with your healthcare provider, and deciphering health insurance. As an educated and informed healthcare consumer, you will be better able to navigate the fragmented healthcare system and form partnerships with your doctors. The goal of this insight is improved outcomes for you and your family.

“Leading Healthcare Transformation: Doctors, Nurses, and Managers at the Helm” is an exhaustive analysis of the modern dynamics in the healthcare sector, with a particular emphasis on middle management leadership. It provides a deep dive into the roles, responsibilities, and leadership abilities required by different professionals, including doctors, nurses, and managers.

No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school.

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.

While traditional drugs mostly help us manage the effects of disease, cell therapies promise genuine cures for a broad range of intractable ailments, from Alzheimer’s to heart damage to cancer. They could even reverse the effects of aging. For the first time in history, on an unprecedented scale, we possess the power to modify the biology that gives rise to disease, ultimately restoring individuals to a state of normalcy and reversing debilitating ailments. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb traces the scientific achievements that propelled progress in cell therapies.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in 19th-century Britain. It argues that it was in the 19th century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorized and understood. A century on, their conceptions of mental illness continue to influence our views today. Beliefs and behavior were divided up into the pathological and the healthy. The influence of religion and the supernatural became significant measures of insanity in individuals, countries, and cultures. Troubled by Faith explores these ideas about the supernatural across society through the prism of medical history.

This audio program contains some of the collected writings of psychic researcher Dick Sutphen. His unique blend of metaphysics, Zen, and human-potential concepts clarifies and simplifies the spiritual quest, while challenging New Age ideas that keep seekers from focusing upon the real goal.

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.