The History Book Club discussion

This is the thread to post any discussion on current and/or historic information which is connected with Medicine.

This could also concern the history of medicine, the medical and research fields attempts to search for cures, their successes and those areas where great strides have been made.

NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE - 2010

British IVF pioneer Robert Edwards wins Nobel prize for medicine

Robert Edwards, the British scientist who pioneered IVF, was responsible for the conception of Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby.

Source: BBC (with video)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/201...

This was a story that BBC did in 2008 about Louise Brown who at the time was 30 years old: (with video)

30th birthday for first IVF baby

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/750...

As a Type I diabetic, I very much enjoyed reading this book about the discovery of insulin. At the time, it was considered to be a cure for diabetes. After all, with insulin people wouldn't die in the first year or so. A cure for diabetes is now defined differently, but the discover of insulin and how to use it was surely the first of many steps.

by Michael Bliss

Thank you for sharing that with us Elizabeth. I think I will add that book to my list.

Here is a very interesting book that I thoroughly enjoyed:


by Wendy Moore
Publishers blurb:
WINNER OF THE MEDICAL JOURNALISTS' OPEN BOOK AWARD 2005 Revered and feared in equal measure, John Hunter was the most famous surgeon of eighteenth-century London. Rich or poor, aristocrat or human freak, suffering Georgians knew that Hunter’s skills might well save their lives ­but if he failed, their corpses could end up on his dissecting table, their bones and organs destined for display in his remarkable, macabre museum. Maverick medical pioneer, adored teacher, brilliant naturalist, Hunter was a key figure of the Enlightenment who transformed surgery, advanced biological understanding and even anticipated the evolutionary theories of Darwin. He provided inspiration both for Dr Jekyll and Dr Dolittle. But the extremes to which he went to pursue his scientific mission raised question marks then as now. John Hunter’s extraordinary world comes to life in this remarkable, award-winning biography written by a wonderful new talent.

Reviews:
"A biography packed with gruesome facts and eye-opening perceptions. It is an accomplished achievement and a splendid read." - The Times

"Moore has recreated Hunter’s life and times in wonderfully rich detail. This is a truly fascinating read." - Dr. Alan Maryon Davis

I think it sounded good until the Times mentioned gruesome facts. What gruesome facts?

Ah, well depends what you find gruesome I suppose. Some interesting facts that amused me was that in those days testing was pretty rudimentary, it was a case of look, sniff and taste! The link below provides more information on John Hunter:

John Hunter

There is also this book below that I have not read but covers the history of medicine:


by Roy Porter

Taste? Taste what?

Thank you for the adds though; I do think they look intriguing,

I'm afraid to say Bentley, taste anything that they took from the body, urine to check for sugar levels, etc. All testing then was done by senses; sight, smell and taste - yuck!

Yuck is right...I was afraid of that answer.

Its very interesting reading though, the development of pathology and surgery back in those times of grave-robbers, Jekyll & Hyde and Frankenstein. Another book that was surprisingly interesting considering the subject matter was; "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach.

by Mary Roach
Review:
" 'Uproariously funny' doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines ("The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back"), it is clear that she's taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death. Roach delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put, from medical experimentation to applications in transportation safety research (in a chapter archly called "Dead Man Driving") to work by forensic scientists quantifying rates of decay under a wide array of bizarre circumstances. There are also chapters on cannibalism, including an aside on dumplings allegedly filled with human remains from a Chinese crematorium, methods of disposal (burial, cremation, composting) and "beating-heart" cadavers used in organ transplants. Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice as she describes such macabre situations as a plastic surgery seminar with doctors practicing face-lifts on decapitated human heads and her trip to China in search of the cannibalistic dumpling makers. Even Roach's digressions and footnotes are captivating, helping to make the book impossible to put down." - Publishers Weekly

by Spencer J. Condie

Primarily the biography of an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but also devotes several chapters to his years as a world-class heart surgeon. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the work he did on the team that developed the heart-lung machine.

Thanks again.

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Its very interesting reading though, the development of pathology and surgery back in those times of grave-robbers, Jekyll & Hyde and Frankenstein. Another book that was surprisingly interesting co..."

You are making me laugh Aussie Rick with these selections.

Well in the same spirit can I offer this title which has some medical background as well as providing an interesting history into some people's worse nightmare; "Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear" by Jan Bondeson. It’s a very interesting read and I am sure many people will find it an intriguing book.

by Jan Bondeson
Review:
"The huge modern textbooks on forensic medicine... choose to ignore the fact that less than 150 years ago many medical practitioners freely admitted to being uncertain whether their patients were dead or alive." As the author (whose excellent The London Monster was published in December; see Forecasts, Nov. 20, 2000) shows in this engrossing yet disappointing book, the fear of accidentally being buried alive reverberated throughout 18th- and 19th-century Europe and the United States, and even continued into the 20th century. Hundreds of stories about people being discovered buried alive circulated in medical journals, literature (from the medieval Decameron to Edgar Allan Poe) and popular lore. This fear spurred doctors to debate when life ends, and motivated Germany to create mortuaries in the 1800s in which corpses rotted for days before they could be interred. In 1822, another German invented a "security coffin," in which a person buried prematurely could breathe through a tube by triggering a mechanism. The subject is fascinating, and Bondeson, a medical doctor, is thorough in discussing the alleged cases. The "shameful past of medical science with regard to the certainty of the signs of death" was, indeed, a real problem. Yet he readily acknowledges that the numbers of those buried alive were "exaggerated." If that is true, as by his own account it appears to be, then a book that studied the fear itself and what factors affected this deep-rooted dread might have been more fruitful. The few pages where Bondeson does this--where, for instance, he discusses the impact of the coffin's development in the 17th and 18th centuries--are where his subject truly comes, well, alive." - Publishers Weekly

Heres a interesting book by an Author already mentioned in this thread by Roy Porter

I just recieved by Caroline Moorehead. I think it will be interesting to read about how the Red Cross came about!

Goodreads Synopsis:

When vacationing Genevan businessman Henri Dunant arrived at the resort community of Solferino, Italy, in June 1859, he certainly did not expect to find the remains of a bloody battle, concluded earlier in the day, between the Austrians and the French. The casualties, over 6,000 of them, horrified Dunant. More shocking were the survivors, left unattended on the bloody battlefield, many of them severely wounded and near death. Overcome by the brutality of the scene before him, Dunant organized and led a team of volunteers that systematically cared for the wounded. Within five years, he and four other prosperous Swiss citizens formed the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded and drafted the first Geneva Convention.

Renamed in 1876 the International Committee of the Red Cross, the organization today comprises 137 national societies and 250 million members. The Committee that governs it, however, has changed little since the 1870s. According to Caroline Moorehead, author of Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross, the power to monitor and criticize all governments of the world remains "in the hands of a small band of co-opted, elderly Swiss lawyers and bankers." While the International Committee has operated staunchly on its self-prescribed principles throughout the 20th century, many of its decisions, actions, and instances of inaction have been ambiguous and seemingly motivated by politics. In Dunant's Dream, Moorehead, a London-based journalist, presents a scrutinizing yet balanced history of the organization. Despite its length, Dunant's Dream makes no attempt to be comprehensive. Instead, Moorehead, her argument supported by unprecedented access to private Red Cross archives in Geneva, analyzes the conflicts, issues, and moral dilemmas from over 130 years of war and natural disasters that have had the most determining effect on the growth of the modern Red Cross.

Hi Kristi, it looks like a very good book. I have the first edition hardback still sitting in my library to read. Let me know what you think of it once you have finished it.

Oh please, some serious research is requied here, especially on the Red Cross's failings in the 20th C.

Hi Rory, please feel free to offer any good recommendations that you think is relevant to this thread.

In regards to "Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross", it appears to offer a decent and non-biased overview of this organisations history, including its failings:


"Moorehead, a columnist for London's Independent, has written a fluid, character-rich history of the Red Cross, a "movement which has no equal in size and commitment outside of organized religion." She ably shows how the Red Cross has struggled to apply the ideals originally drafted by a group of enlightened Swiss conservatives in the mid-19th century: how to serve the humanitarian needs of people in the most inhumane of situations. As Moorehead chronicles the group's triumphs and shortcomings, from its inception 130 years ago to its current activities around the world, she focuses, with a good novelist's sense of moral complexity, on the messy intersection between reality and lofty ideals as the Red Cross struggled to reconcile its mission with political constraints. She doesn't shy away from the group's worst moments, such as in 1942, when it voted not to make a public appeal on behalf of Europe's Jews (indeed, Red Cross officials, having been duped by the Nazis, wrote a glowing report after a trip to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938). Her portraits of key figures are memorable. The title refers to Henri-Jean Dunant, a failed Swiss businessman who, in his 30s, came up with the idea of the Red Cross after he witnessed the carnage of a battle in the Italian town of Solferino in 1859. In 1901, he shared the first Nobel Peace Prize ever awarded. Ultimately, Moorehead's depiction of the Red Cross echoes her appraisal of Dunant: "passionate, intemperate, foolhardy but essentially a moral figure." Her book turns the Red Cross into a revealing lens on the troubled history of the past 130 years. - Publishers Weekly

by Caroline Moorehead

Here is an interesting book that covers one of the medical banes of sailors in the days of sail; "Scurvy" by Stephen Bown.

by Stephen R. Bown
Review:
"Stephen R. Brown's award winning historical writing is clearly demonstrated in this fascinating story of the frustrating and agonisingly lengthy search for a cure for scurvy. Historians have estimated that over two million sailors perished from scurvy during the glorified Age of Sail - more than piracy, shipwreck or any other disease. The `Gray Killer' was a hideous affliction causing connective tissue to degenerate, old wounds to re-open and broken bones to separate, amongst other horrors. Untreated, it caused an agonising death. Physicians searched for decades for the cause and cure and the book details their many fatal errors. Incredibly, the relatively simple cure for this disease was missed on many occasions. It was also found, as early as the seventeenth century, that lemon juice prevented the onset and progression of the disease, yet this cure was overlooked again and again, in favour of newer and seemingly more erudite theories. The book is a catalogue of historical missed opportunities. Eventually, in the late eighteenth century, the surgeon James Lind, the great sea captain James Cook and the physician Sir Gilbert Blane undertook to investigate and defeat this scourge of seafarers. Working independently over several decades, they would eventually prove that scurvy was a disease of chemistry and food - not vapours and viruses. This is a fascinating historical investigation that reveals much about power and ignorance, courage and determination. Readers will become absorbed in the frustrating story of a cure that was found, ignored and lost before being finally re-discovered and implemented to the benefit of seafarers worldwide." - Kirkus

Another very interesting book covering one of mankinds worse medical diseases is; "The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis" by Thomas Dormandy.

by Thomas Dormandy
Publishers blurb:
This is a history of tuberculosis, including its social, artistic and human impact. Thomas Dormandy's account of the search for the cure is complemented by a description of its complex natural history; portraits of individual sufferers, including writers, artists and musicians, whose lives were shaped (and often curtailed) by the disease. Tuberculosis is not a disease of the past, in many parts of the world it is still a bigger killer than AIDS; while in America and Europe drug-resistant strains threaten its resurgence.

Can I also offer two very interesting books covering the history of the plague or the 'Black Death'. The first one is; "The Great Mortality" by John Kelly and the second book is; "The Great Plaque" by A.Lloyd & Dorothy C. Moote.

by John Kelly
Publishers blurb:
A compelling history of the Black Death that scoured Europe in the mid 14th-century killing twenty-five million people. It was one of the worst human disasters in history. 'The bodies were sparsely covered that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured them!And believing it to be the end of the world, no one wept for the dead, for all expected to die.' Agnolo di Turo, Siena, 1348 In just over a thousand days from 1347 to 1351 the 'Black Death' travelled across medieval Europe killing thirty per cent of its population. It was a catastrophe that touched the lives of every individual on the continent. The deadly Y. Pestis virus entered Europe in October 1347 by Genoese galley at Messina, Sicily. In the spring of 1348 it was devastating the cities of central Italy, by June 1348 it had reached France and Spain, and by August England. At St Mary's, Ashwell, Hertfordshire, an anonymous hand carved the following inscription for 1349: 'Wretched, terrible, destructive year, the remnants of the people alone remain.' According to the Foster scale, a kind of Richter scale of human disaster, the plague of 1347-51 is the second worst catastrophe in recorded history. Only World War II produced more death, physical damage, and emotional suffering. Defence analysts use it as the measure of thermonuclear war -- in geographical extent, abruptness and casualties. In 'The Great Mortality' John Kelly retraces the journey of the Black Death using original source material -- diary fragments, letters and manuscripts. It is the devastating portrait of a continent gripped by an epidemic, but also a very personal story, narrated by the individuals whose lives were touched by it.

Review:
"Kelly is a fair-minded and reliable guide, with a gift for providing racy and vivid background for those who know nothing of the Middle Ages.' Independent on Sunday 'There has never been a better researched, better written or more engaging account of the worst epidemic the world has ever known than this.' Simon Winchester, author of 'The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa' 'Kelly approaches the story of the greatest tragedy in history like a forensic detective who must first recreate the life of the victims before examining their deaths. While writing with a keen eye for the telling details of the past, Kelly's book might also be a warning about our own future." - Jack Weatherford, author of 'Genghis Khan'

by A. Lloyd Moote
Publisher blurb:
In the winter of 1664-65, a bitter cold descended on London in the days before Christmas. Above the city, an unusually bright comet traced an arc in the sky, exciting much comment and portending "horrible windes and tempests." And in the remote, squalid precinct of St. Giles-in-the-Fields outside the city wall, Goodwoman Phillips was pronounced dead of the plague. Her house was locked up and the phrase "Lord Have Mercy On Us" was painted on the door in red. By the following Christmas, the pathogen that had felled Goodwoman Phillips would go on to kill nearly 100,000 people living in and around London -- almost a third of those who did not flee. This epidemic had a devastating effect on the city's economy and social fabric, as well as on those who lived through it. Yet somehow the city continued to function and the activities of daily life went on.

In The Great Plague, historian A. Lloyd Moote and microbiologist Dorothy C. Moote provide an engrossing and deeply informed account of this cataclysmic plague year. At once sweeping and intimate, their narrative takes readers from the palaces of the city's wealthiest citizens to the slums that housed the vast majority of London's inhabitants to the surrounding countryside with those who fled. The Mootes reveal that, even at the height of the plague, the city did not descend into chaos. Doctors, apothecaries, surgeons, and clergy remained in the city to care for the sick; parish and city officials confronted the crisis with all the legal tools at their disposal; and commerce continued even as businesses shut down.

To portray life and death in and around London, the authors focus on the experiences of nine individuals -- among them an apothecary serving a poor suburb, the rector of the city's wealthiest parish, a successful silk merchant who was also a city alderman, a country gentleman, and famous diarist Samuel Pepys. Through letters and diaries, the Mootes offer fresh interpretations of key issues in the history of the Great Plague: how different communities understood and experienced the disease; how medical, religious, and government bodies reacted; how well the social order held together; the economic and moral dilemmas people faced when debating whether to flee the city; and the nature of the material, social, and spiritual resources sustaining those who remained.

Underscoring the human dimensions of the epidemic, Lloyd and Dorothy Moote dramatically recast the history of the Great Plague and offer a masterful portrait of a city and its inhabitants besieged by -- and defiantly resisting -- unimaginable horror.

Reviews:
"In this crowded field, this jewel of a book brings a new dimension by telling the story of how the rich and the poor who stayed rather than escaped survived rather than died, maintained order rather than succumbed to chaos, and provided support and sustenance rather than betrayal and impedance." - Choice

"This is a great story of the great plague of London in the 1660s... Fascinating." - Journal of the American Association of Forensic Dentists

"Based on sound historical research, this is a vibrant retelling of the social, economic, and political context of the Great Plague of London. Lloyd and Dorothy Moote's approach is refreshing and riveting. Their book should have a very wide appeal among general readers and will be of great interest to students and scholars as well." - William G. Naphy, University of Aberdeen

"I read this book with enormous pleasure. It succeeds perfectly on all levels, from new scholarship for academics to a great read for everyone else.... The interwoven narratives of Pepys and other witnesses give a wonderful feel of London's tensions. As an account of a city whose economy slips into crisis as a result of a medical catastrophe, this has never been bettered.... The care and craftsmanship which have gone into it are evident in all the chapters." - Roy Porter

Thanks for the suggestions 'Aussie Rick'

My pleasure Michael, I love sharing books :)

Here is another very interesting book covering the birth of the Red Cross:


by Henry Dunant
Description:
The horrors witnessed by Dunant after the battle of Solferino on June 24 1859 and his humanitarian appeal are the origins of the Red Cross movement.

Recently finished this, it is a remarkable story. Modern medicine owes quite a bit to this woman's cells. A multi-dimensional story about how this woman's tissue impacted medical research, informed consent, and medical privacy. Many other issues explored as well. Gripping.
by Rebecca Skloot

Hi Alisa, looks like a very interesting book with some important messages for the medical community and society.

Just came across mention of this book today, looks interesting.
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Cancer is among the most dreaded of diseases, often mentioned in whispers or euphemisms. (The very word is a curse in Dutch.) Whatever we call it, "the big C" is unavoidable in any language: According to the World Cancer Report, it will become the worldwide leading cause of deaths in 2010. Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies lifts the taboo by presenting a history of cancer in the context of both of miscomprehensions and advances in its detection and treatment. As a cancer physician and researcher whose articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, the author approaches the subject with a rare combination of expertise, humanity, and writing skills. A Discover Great New Book Selection. (A sample of prepublication testimonials: "Rarely have the science and poetry of illness been so elegantly braided together as they are in this erudite, engrossing, kind book.")

It does look like an interesting book, terrible subject matter though.

Alisa wrote: "Just came across mention of this book today, looks interesting.
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Cancer is among the ..."

This made it to a lot of best of year lists, and I saw the author discuss the book (Charlie Rose, I think). It sounds interesting. There are some podcasts online with the author discussing the book as well.

Picked this up today and it looks interesting.
by Molly Caldwell Crosby
In 1878, Memphis, Tennessee, boasted a population of 47,000. That summer, a scourge swept up the Mississippi River. By September, only 19,000 people remained, and 17,000 of them had yellow fever, transforming Memphis into "a city of corpses." The toll on human life surpassed the Chicago fire, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Johnstown flood combined. A century earlier, the U.S. capital was forced to move from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in the wake of a devastating yellow fever epidemic. Yellow fever would become "the most dreaded disease in North America for two hundred years."

Hi Alisa, that does sound like an interesting book, let me know what you think of it once you have finished it.

by Molly Caldwell Crosby

Alisa wrote: "Picked this up today and it looks interesting.
by Molly Caldwell Crosby
..."

A decent book hope you enjoy,

A few others along similar lines that i also enjoyed:

by John M. Barry
- i couldnt put it down a facinating period in medicine

by Steven Johnson
- the concluding remarks of the last chapter were too much for me, but the rest of the book was pretty good.

by William Rosen


I have not read this one yet but its in one of my TBR shelves:
by David M. Oshinsky

Here is an interesting book:

by Douglas Starr

Publisher's Synopsis:

Blood

Essence and emblem of life – feared, revered, mythologized, and used in magic and medicine from earliest times – human blood is now the center of a huge, secretive, and often dangerous worldwide commerce. It is a commerce whose impact on humanity rivals that of any other business. Millions of lives have been saved by blood and his various derivatives, and tens of thousands of lives have been lost.

Douglas Starr’s sweeping history is a fascinating tale that ranges across centuries and continents – the curing of madmen with animal blood in 17th century France, the development of transfusion with the of Vienna and New York… the grisly Soviet experiments of the 1930s with cadaver blood. It explains how the medical breakthroughs of World War II laid the foundation of the global marketplace worth billions of dollars per year. The author recounts the tragic spread of AIDS through the distribution of contaminated blood products, and describes why and how related scandals erupted around the world. Finally he looks at the latest attempts to make artificial blood – a Holy Grail of the pharmaceutical industry that remains tantalizingly just beyond the scientists’ grasp.

This groundbreaking book tackles a subject of universal and urgent importance and explores the perils and promises that lie ahead.

Another interesting book:

Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution By Holly Tucker

Holly Tucker

Publisher's Synopsis:

"A fast-paced and fascinating ride through a dark and devious period in science, Blood Work is a witty, insightful, and skillfully written book that sheds light on the mysterious story of blood transfusion." --Wendy Moore, author of The Knife Man

On a cold day in 1667, a renegade physician named Jean Denis transfused calf's blood into one of Paris's most notorious madmen. In doing so, Denis angered not only the elite scientists who had hoped to perform the first animal-to-human transfusions themselves, but also a host of powerful conservatives who believed that the doctor was toying with forces of nature that he did not understand. Just days after the experiment, the madman was dead, and Denis was framed for murder.

A riveting account of the first blood transfusion experiments in 17th-century Paris and London, Blood Work gives us a vivid glimpse of a particularly fraught period in history--a time of fire and plague, empire building and international distrust, when monsters were believed to inhabit the seas and the boundary between science and superstition was still in flux. Amid this atmosphere of uncertainty, transfusionists like Denis became embroiled in the hottest cultural debates and fiercest political rivalries of their day. As historian Holly Tucker reveals, transfusion's detractors would stop at nothing--not even murdering Denis's patient--to outlaw a practice that might jeopardize human souls, pave the way for monstrous hybrid creatures, or even provoke divine retribution.

Taking us from the highest ranks of society to the lowest, from dissection rooms in palaces to the filth-clogged streets of Paris, Blood Work sheds light on an era that wrestled with the same questions about morality and experimentation that haunt medical science to this day.

An interesting book:

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World by Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer

Publisher's Synopsis:

As its title suggests, this book was written for interested nonmedical readers and for physicians other than neurologists, neuroscientists, or medical historians. But readers expecting a detailed analysis of the mind-body relationship should look elsewhere -- for example, in Adam Zeman's Consciousness: A User's Guide (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003) or Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (London: Pan Macmillan, 1995). The story that is told in Soul Made Flesh centers on the life and work of Thomas Willis (1621-1675) in a way that resembles both a biography and a eulogy. The main discovery that the author attributes to Willis is that of the brain as the sole organ governing sensations, motions, emotions, memory, and reason. It is true that until the Renaissance, medical teaching was dominated by the teachings of Galen (129-ca. 199), who explained mental functions as interactions between the heart and the cerebral ventricles. Willis may have provided definitive proof that the mind resided in the brain, especially by pointing out the anatomical and functional analogy between the brains of humans and those of animals (i.e., the common anima brutorum, as distinct from the human soul in a religious sense, which Willis was careful enough to leave room for). Yet he built on the work of others -- not only Vesalius and Descartes, to whom this book gives ample attention, but also Franciscus Sylvius. Hence, the "discovery of the brain" was an evolution, not a revolution such as William Harvey's startling conclusion (published in 1628) that veins transported blood toward the heart instead of away from it. It is also true that Willis attributed distinct functions to specific parts of the brain, but only in a fairly general way (e.g., the cerebellum was supposed to drive the internal organs) -- a tad less hypothetical than Descartes's mechanical model in which the pineal gland was thought to wiggle around and spurt animal spirits to specific points in the ventricular walls. Willis's main contributions to medicine are in the realm of anatomy, although he left some astute clinical descriptions. Again, he was not the first to study the base of the brain by removing it as a whole before cutting it. Vesalius and Varolio produced rather crude representations in this way, and Vesling clearly outlined the basal arteries -- though not quite the full circle. It is primarily for the accuracy of Willis's anatomical observations that his name has become enshrined. (Incidentally, he also coined the term "neurologie.") Willis's fame owes a great deal to the delicate etchings of Christopher Wren, who later became an architect and helped to rebuild London after the great fire of 1666. Other virtuosos who made up the "Oxford circle" during the Republican era (1646-1660) were Ralph Bathurst, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Richard Lower, and William Petty. After the Restoration, the circle evolved into the Royal Society. The author cleverly weaves the personal stories of these scientists and the larger story of the English Civil War through that of Thomas Willis's life and work. The brain-mind relationship emerges again at the close of the book, where the tale takes a big leap and culminates in functional magnetic resonance imaging as a tool for studying mental processes -- in my perception, a humble start rather than an apotheosis. The book has been handsomely produced and typeset; it must have been for aesthetic reasons that the notes were not numbered in the text. Historians will probably also frown at the author's romantic penchant to adorn his dramatis personae with emotions and aims. In a nutshell, Soul Made Flesh makes good reading as an introduction to the work of Thomas Willis and to medicine in the 17th century. J. van Gijn, M.D.
Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS. --

HISTORICAL FICTION - A NOVEL

Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Publisher's Synopsis:

An epic novel that spans continents and generations, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, compassion and redemption, exile and home that unfolds across five decades in India, Ethiopia, and America.

Narrated by Marion Stone, the story begins even before Marion and his twin brother, Shiva, are born in Addis Ababa’s Missing Hospital (a mispronunciation of “Mission Hospital”), with the illicit, years-in-the-making romance between their parents, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a beautiful Indian nun, and Thomas Stone, a brash, brilliant British surgeon. Mary and Thomas meet on a boat out of Madras in 1947; she follows him to Ethiopia and to Missing, where they work side by side for seven years as nurse and doctor.

After Mary dies while giving birth to the twins—a harrowing, traumatic scene on the operating table—Thomas vanishes, and Marion and Shiva grow up with only a dim sense of who he was, and with a deep hostility toward him for what they see as an act of betrayal and cowardice. The twins are raised by Hema and Ghosh, two Indian doctors who also work at Missing, and who shower Marion and Shiva with love and nurture their interest in medicine—part of the deep, almost preternatural connection the brothers share.

They are so close that Marion, as a boy, thinks of them as a single entity: ShivaMarion. Marion and Shiva come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution, and their lives become intertwined with the nation’s politics.

Addis Ababa is a colorful, cosmopolitan city: the Italians have left behind cappuccino machines, Campari umbrellas, and a vibrant expat community.

But they've also left a nation crippled by poverty, hunger, and authoritarian rule: Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s is both bolstered and trapped by its notorious emperor, Haile Selassie, and rocked by violence and civil war.

Yet it is not politics but love that tears the brothers apart: Shiva sleeps with Genet—the daughter of their housekeeper and the girl Marion has always loved. This second betrayal, now by the two people this sensitive young man loves most, sends Marion into a deep depression. And when Genet joins a radical political group fighting for the independence of Eritrea, Marion’s connection to her forces him into exile: he sneaks out of Ethiopia and makes his way to America.

Marion interns at a hospital in the Bronx, an underfunded, chaotic place where the patients are nearly as poor and desperate as those he had seen at Missing. It is here that Marion comes to maturity as a doctor and as a man. It is here, too, that he meets his father and takes his first steps toward reconciling with him.

But when the past catches up to Marion—nearly destroying him—he must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. The surprising, stunning denouement both arises from and reenacts the major themes of Cutting for Stone: love and betrayal, forgiveness and self-sacrifice, and the inextricable union of life and death.

In Cutting for Stone, renowned physician Abraham Verghese has given us a remarkable reading experience that explores the lives of a memorable cast of characters, many of them doctors; the insight the novel offers into the world of medicine, along with its wealth of precise detail about how doctors work, is unparalleled in American fiction. Verghese is so attuned to the movements of the heart and of the mind, so adept at dramatizing the great themes of human existence, and he has filled this world with such richly drawn, fascinating characters, that Cutting for Stone becomes one of those rare books one wishes would never end, an alternate reality that both rivals and illuminates the real world readers must return to when the book is closed.

This novel deals with the emotional lives of doctors, how in Ethiopia patients assume that all illnesses are fatal and that death is expected, but in America, news of having a fatal illness “always seemed to come as a surprise, as if we took it for granted that we were immortal” How come there are such basic differences in terms of how illness is viewed and treated? The roles of compassion, faith, and hope in medicine are also examined. There is a very close examination of what life is like in Ethiopia: for women, reflections on how the influences of Ethiopia’s various rulers—England, Italy, Emperor Selassie—reveal themselves in day-to-day life. The novel also examines the exile and the immigrant experience within various characters.

I also thought that this was interesting:

Cutting for Stone comes from a line in the Hippocratic Oath: “I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.” Verghese has said that this line comes from ancient times, when bladder stones were epidemic and painful: “There were itinerant stone cutters—lithologists—who could cut into either the bladder or the perineum and get the stone out, but because they cleaned the knife by wiping their blood-stiffened surgical aprons, patients usually died of infection the next day.”

Another interesting book:

Networks of the Brain

by Olaf Sporns

Publisher's Synopsis:

Over the last decade, the study of complex networks has expanded across diverse scientific fields. Increasingly, science is concerned with the structure, behavior, and evolution of complex systems ranging from cells to ecosystems. Modern network approaches are beginning to reveal fundamental principles of brain architecture and function, and in Networks of the Brain, Olaf Sporns describes how the integrative nature of brain function can be illuminated from a complex network perspective. Highlighting the many emerging points of contact between neuroscience and network science, the book serves to introduce network theory to neuroscientists and neuroscience to those working on theoretical network models.

Brain networks span the microscale of individual cells and synapses and the macroscale of cognitive systems and embodied cognition. Sporns emphasizes how networks connect levels of organization in the brain and how they link structure to function. In order to keep the book accessible and focused on the relevance to neuroscience of network approaches, he offers an informal and nonmathematical treatment of the subject. After describing the basic concepts of network theory and the fundamentals of brain connectivity, Sporns discusses how network approaches can reveal principles of brain architecture. He describes new links between network anatomy and function and investigates how networks shape complex brain dynamics and enable adaptive neural computation. The book documents the rapid pace of discovery and innovation while tracing the historical roots of the field.

The study of brain connectivity has already opened new avenues of study in neuroscience. Networks of the Brain offers a synthesis of the sciences of complex networks and the brain that will be an essential foundation for future research.

If you like poetry with a medical twist:

by Peter Pereira

A little strange; but folks might like to take a look:

Publisher's Synopsis:


"It’s rare in contemporary poetry to find a book as boldly celebratory as Peter Pereira’s new collection.”—Chase Twichell

In What’s Written on the Body, physician Peter Pereira explores the body, medicine, wordplay, gardening, family, and domestic gay life, often drawing from his experience as a community clinic doctor in Seattle.

An avid Scrabble player, anagrammer, and cruciverbalist, Pereira opens the collection with a delightful selection of wordplay poems, as a counterpoint to poems recounting the day-to-day practice of a family physician, from suturing a wound in the ER to extracting an eraser from a child’s nose.

From “Body Talk”:

Do you hear how the scalp claps?
How the heart contains the earth, yet
is also a hater? How saliva
is lava, while testicles sit elect
for their slice test . . .

About the Doctor (Poet):

Peter Pereira is a family physician in Seattle, where he cares for an urban, underserved population of immigrants, refugees, housing project residents, and the elderly. His first book won the Hayden Carruth Award, and his individual poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Poetry,USA Weekend, and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Eugenics:

Nancy Leys Stepan

Goodreads Write-up:

Eugenics was a term coined in 1883 to name the scientific and social theory that advocated "race improvement" through selective human breeding. In Europe and the United States the eugenics movement found many supporters before it was finally discredited by its association with the racist ideology of Nazi Germany. Examining for the first time how eugenics was taken up by scientists and social reformers in Latin America, Nancy Leys Stepan compares the eugenics movements in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina with the more familiar cases of Britain, the United States, and Germany. In this highly original account, Stepan sheds new light on the role of science in reformulating the problems of race, gender, reproduction, and public health in a time of intensified searching for new national identities. Drawing upon a rich body of evidence concerning the technical publications and professional meetings of Latin American eugenists, she traces a vibrant picture of how they adapted eugenic principles to their varying local contexts between the world wars. Stepan demonstrates that the eugenists of Latin America diverged considerably from their counterparts in Britain and the United States in their ideological approaches and their interpretations of key texts concerning heredity. "The Hour of Eugenics" raises crucial questions about the relationship between social and cultural identity and the nature of scientific discourse. It will be essential reading for historians of science and medicine, Latin Americanists, and others interested in cultural history and women's history.

This is a novel which has medicine and its art woven into the tale of the story.

Abraham Verghese

Goodreads Write-up:

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

Setting: Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)

Awards:

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2009), Indies Choice Book Award for Adult Fiction (2010), PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award Finalist (2010)

John Irving Reviews Cutting for Stone:

John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times--winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules--a film with seven Academy Award nominations. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Cutting for Stone:


That Abraham Verghese is a doctor and a writer is already established; the miracle of this novel is how organically the two are entwined. I’ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here. The medical detail is stunning, but it never overwhelms the humane and narrative aspects of this moving and ambitious novel. This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb! And what terrific characters--even the most minor players are given a full history. There is also a sense of great foreboding; by the midpoint of the story, one dreads what will further befall these characters. The foreshadowing is present in the chapter titles, too--‘The School of Suffering’ not least among them! Cutting for Stone is a remarkable achievement.--John Irving

Atul Gawande

Amazon Write-up:

Amazon Exclusive: Malcolm Gladwell Reviews The Checklist Manifesto

Malcolm Gladwell was named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2005. He is most recently the author of What the Dog Saw (a collection of his writing from The New Yorker) as well as the New York Times bestsellers Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Checklist Manifesto:


Over the past decade, through his writing in The New Yorker magazine and his books Complications and Better, Atul Gawande has made a name for himself as a writer of exquisitely crafted meditations on the problems and challenges of modern medicine. His latest book, The Checklist Manifesto, begins on familiar ground, with his experiences as a surgeon. But before long it becomes clear that he is really interested in a problem that afflicts virtually every aspect of the modern world--and that is how professionals deal with the increasing complexity of their responsibilities. It has been years since I read a book so powerful and so thought-provoking.

Gawande begins by making a distinction between errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don't know enough), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we made because we don’t make proper use of what we know). Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these errors, and he walks us through a series of examples from medicine showing how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually inevitable: it's just too easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plan properly for every eventuality. Gawande then visits with pilots and the people who build skyscrapers and comes back with a solution. Experts need checklists--literally--written guides that walk them through the key steps in any complex procedure. In the last section of the book, Gawande shows how his research team has taken this idea, developed a safe surgery checklist, and applied it around the world, with staggering success.

The danger, in a review as short as this, is that it makes Gawande’s book seem narrow in focus or prosaic in its conclusions. It is neither. Gawande is a gorgeous writer and storyteller, and the aims of this book are ambitious. Gawande thinks that the modern world requires us to revisit what we mean by expertise: that experts need help, and that progress depends on experts having the humility to concede that they need help. --Malcolm Gladwell

Undertaker of the Mind

Jonathan Andrews

Goodreads Write-up:

"Undertaker of the Mind is the most splendid piece of original research for many a year on the early history of British psychiatry. Brilliantly exploiting hitherto unused documentation, Andrews and Scull bring the once murky world of the eighteenth- century mad-doctor to life, and dispel many deeply embedded myths in the process. Absolutely essential reading!"

Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal

John Monro was the eminent 18th-century visiting physician responsible for the Bethlem Hospital, the first public institution for the insane in England. Andrews (Oxford Brookes Univ.; They're in the Trade of Lunacy) and Scull (sociology, Univ. of California; The Most Solitary Affliction) show how Monro and other 18th-century physicians treating the insane were part of the medical establishment and closely reflected the culture of the times.

They use case studies of Monro's patients to prove that the "mad" physicians worked with fellow doctors and adhered to standard medical practices. While it's not an earth-shattering thesis, it has not been the focus of previous studies in the field. The case studies and the extensive use of period illustrations and publications also reveal how madness was perceived in society. In particular, the authors focus on what was called religious fanaticism and madness in the aristocracy.

Written for informed readers, the book contains extensive notes and a good bibliography. Those interested in the history of insanity in England should also consult Roy Porter's Mind-Forg'd Manacles (1987) and Scull's Masters of Bedlam (Princeton Univ., 1996). Recommended for academic collections. Eric D. Albright, Duke Univ. Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, NC

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

This book about the work of John Monro, a doctor in 18th-century England, is based on a newly discovered case book of his (which is being published separately). Monro is best known for his work at Bethlem, or "Bedlam." Bethlem -- a contraction of the name of the public asylum at Bethlehem Hospital in London -- was the only public insane asylum in 18th-century England.

The growing affluence of England was accompanied by geographic mobility, a flourishing of service occupations, and as Andrews and Scull write, a "commercialization of existence" that decreased the willingness and ability of families to care for their mentally ill relatives at home. The alternative was the asylum.

The one at Bethlem was infamous because Londoners went there for entertainment. Some of William Hogarth's engravings depicting this macabre form of amusement are reproduced in this book. John Monro (1715 to 1791) was the physician at Bethlem at the time. He was the best known of the Monro family, four generations of whom had occupied the position of visiting physician at Bethlem.

The family also had professional and financial interests in private "madhouses." In Undertaker of the Mind, several of Monro's cases are described in detail. One of his patients was Alexander Cruden, a remarkable man who was interested in the Bible, Milton, political office, righting the wrongs done to others, observance of the Sabbath, and pamphlet writing. He created a large and valuable concordance to the Bible, still in use today, with more than 200,000 entries.

He wrote it in just over a year but spent much of the rest of his life correcting it. On occasion, he was a public nuisance and was confined in Bethnal Green, where his attending physician was James Monro, John Monro's father. Cruden escaped from Bethnal Green by sawing his way through the leg of the bed to which he was bound and then leaping through a window.

Five years later, in 1743, he was confined at Bethlem, and in 1753 he was confined at a small asylum in Chelsea, where John Monro was the physician. Cruden worked as a proofreader and wrote about his life in pamphlets, which he happily called "The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector." Undertaker of the Mind also recounts the misadventures of the third Earl of Orford and his uncle, Horace Walpole, son of a former prime minister and author of the well-known Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto. Thanks to Walpole's prolific pen, we have abundant detail about the illness and treatment of the third earl.

There is also the story of Margaret Nicholson, who tried to kill George III in August 1786. John Monro and his son, Thomas, examined Nicholson over the course of several days and decided that she clearly was insane. Just one week after the attempted murder, she was transported to Bethlem, where she stayed until her death 41 years later. Justice seems to have moved quickly in those days. Gothic novels about innocent young women who were locked up in madhouses for life and treated with great cruelty because they were intent on marrying the wrong person contain misleading exaggerations. The actual treatment of the mad may have been less horrible. Both Cruden and the third Earl of Orford, for example, were confined against their will several times but were also released. During Nicholson's time at Bethlem, she seems to have been treated gently, and many visitors described her as being well dressed and as often reading Shakespeare and writing letters. John Monro himself is a shadowy figure in comparison with the unambivalent and energetic Cruden and the delusional Nicholson. He wrote very little. He did publish a riposte to William Battie's attack on the management of Bethlem by his father. Whether Monro or Battie won this battle of opposing monographs is still debated today.

Physicians of the 18th century struggled to be recognized as gentlemen who did not get their hands dirty. Monro would often diagnose his patients' illnesses from a distance, unlike surgeons and apothecaries, who were of a lower class and actually touched their patients. Monro and his colleagues were quite open about their inability to treat their patients. The accounts of their patients' illnesses will intrigue psychiatrists who may wonder about 21st-century diagnoses. Frances Rachel Frankenburg, M.D.
Copyright © 2002 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS

The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity

Roy Porter

Publisher's Synopsis:


"To combine enormous knowledge with a delightful style and a highly idiosyncratic point of view is Roy Porter's special gift, and it makes [this] book . . . alive and fascinating and provocative on every page."—Oliver Sacks, M.D.

Hailed as "a remarkable achievement" (Boston Sunday Globe) and as "a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking . . . a splendid and thoroughly engrossing book" (Los Angeles Times), Roy Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords us an opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to mankind. Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, covering ground from the diseases of the hunter-gatherers to today's threat of AIDS and ebola, from the clearly defined conviction of the Hippocratic oath to the muddy ethical dilemmas of modern-day medicine. Offering up a treasure trove of historical surprises along the way, this book "has instantly become the standard single-volume work in its field" (The Lancet). "The author's perceptiveness is, as usual, scalpel-sharp; his manner genially bedside; his erudition invigorating." - Simon Schama

I have discovered an extremely interesting website and found this article:

The UCL Centre for the History of Medicine - 183 Euston Road - London - NW1 2BE Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 8100

Here is the general site location:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/publicat...

It deals generally speaking with medical information and it is free but there are some great finds in there regarding important personages: in this case Winston Churchill.

This article was titled:

Encounters With Winston Churchill by W. Russell Brain

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic...

The general website is called Medical History:

Medical History

Medical History is a refereed journal devoted to all aspects of the history of medicine and health, with the goal of broadening and deepening the understanding of the field, in the widest sense, by historical studies of the highest quality. It is also the journal of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health. The membership of the Editorial Board, which includes senior members of the EAHMH, reflects the commitment to the finest international standards in refereeing of submitted papers and the reviewing of books. The journal publishes in English, but welcomes submissions from scholars for whom English is not a first language; language and copy-editing assistance will be provided wherever possible.

Since 1981, Medical History has also published annually a separate Supplement approximately 150 pages in length. Also available is Medical History Index: Volumes 1 to 38, 1957–1994, prepared by Miles Weatherall.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/publicat...

With Faith and Physic: The Diary of a Tudor Gentlewoman - Lady Grace Mildmay, 1552-1620

Linda A. Pollock

Publisher's Synopsis:

Lady Grace Mildmay wrote the earliest extant complete autobiography written by a woman in English. The wife of a Northamptonshire landowner and daughter-in-law of Elizabeth I's Chancellor, she wrote about her home life, running a household and rearing children; on her spiritual life as a Protestant just after the Reformation; and about her advanced medical knowledge and care and treatment of the poor.

Linda Pollock has edited Lady Grace's writings for this book to provide insights into the life of a Tudor gentlewoman, her eloquence and her interests

Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy And Renaissance Culture

Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy And Renaissance Culture - no cover available by Stanton J. Linden

Publisher's Synopsis:

Continuing strong interest in alchemy and hermeticism in many academic fields is reflected in the growing number of scholarly books and articles, specialized journals, colloquia and conferences, and university-level courses and seminars devoted to these and related subjects. Furthermore, as a visit to virtually any bookshop reveals, there exists a large - perhaps steadily increasing - popular and semi-popular market for these works. Two related characteristics mark the academic, research-oriented side of this burgeoning enterprise: its interdisciplinary nature and its tendency to reassess and reinterpret, often radically, the authors, works, and ideas that are its focus, frequently with the result of discovering a high level of alchemical and hermetic interest where previously it had not been suspected or at least readily admitted. This collection of new essays reflects this groundswell of activity, touching on fields as diverse as history of science and medicine, literature, history, art history and iconography, philosophy, religion, and numismatics. Contributors include both internationally known scholars and several new and original voices. The period of focus is 1500 to 1700 and essays on both English and Continental culture are included. The book's title, "Mystical Metal of Gold," alluding to alchemy's spiritual and physical - esoteric and exoteric - dimensions, itself suggests the rich diversity of this vital field of research.