Bizarre Medical Ideas

Bizarre Medical Ideas PDF Author: Edzard Ernst
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031551028
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description

Bizarre Medical Ideas

Bizarre Medical Ideas PDF Author: Edzard Ernst
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031551028
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description


Strange Medicine

Strange Medicine PDF Author: Nathan Belofsky
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101624582
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Discover the astonishing and peculiar history of medicine with this perfect gift for history buffs, doctors, and anyone looking to be amazed by the brilliant and bizarre ideas that shaped the world of medicine as we know it. From the use of electric eels in ancient Egypt to medieval dentists burning candles to combat invisible worms, this book uncovers the weirdest medical practices throughout history, highlighting the most dubious ideas, strangest treatments, and biggest blunders. Entertaining, shocking, and sometimes stomach-turning, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward. Did you know: • Renaissance physicians timed surgical procedures according to the position of the stars? • Blood from beheadings was believed to cure epilepsy? • Dr. Walter Freeman, the world’s foremost practitioner of lobotomies, practiced his craft while traveling on family camping trips, hammering ice picks into the eye sockets of his patients in between hikes in the woods? Strange Medicine is an illuminating panorama of medical history as you’ve never seen it before.

Bizarre Medicine

Bizarre Medicine PDF Author: Ruth Clifford Engs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health & Wellbeing
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This encyclopedia explores historical and contemporary fringe remedies seen as strange, ridiculous, or even gruesome by modern Western medicine but which nevertheless played an important role in the history of medicine. From placing leeches on the neck to treat a cough to using crocodile dung to prevent pregnancy, a number of medical treatments that now seem unusual were once commonplace. While a few of these remedies may have been effective, most were either useless or actually counterproductive to good health. Even today, there are alternative and fringe treatments considered bizarre by mainstream medicine yet used by hundreds of thousands of people. Bizarre Medicine: Unusual Treatments and Practices through the Ages offers a fascinating look into the history of medicine. Entries are organized by disease or medical condition and explore the folk and traditional "cures" used to treat them. Explanations are provided for why some treatments may have worked and why others may have done more harm than good. In addition, entries provide a clear description of the causes, symptoms, and current treatment options for each condition based on current scientific understanding. Each entry also discusses the condition's enduring impact on society and the arts.

Genius on the Edge

Genius on the Edge PDF Author: Gerald Imber
Publisher: Kaplan Test Prep
ISBN: 9781607148586
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Now in paperback, the groundbreaking biography of the most influential surgeon in American history. “Gerald Imber’s new biography is the first retelling of Halstead’s story in many decades and a particularly expert and thoughtprovoking narrative makes the intense strangeness of Halstead’s subsequent career a gripping story.” —Abigail Zuger, New York Times Science Section Dr. William Stewart Halsted’s life was fascinating and complex. Halsted, perhaps the most important surgeon America has ever produced, battled a lifelong cocaine addiction and maintained numerous secret relationships while simultaneously devising revolutionary medical innovations. Yet the story of Halsted’s life, one of seemingly irreconcilable extremes, is in many ways the story of modern medicine. Before Halsted, poorly-trained doctors performed surgery without anesthesia in unsanitary conditions and patients were rarely expected to survive. Halstead transformed the medical practice by inventing local and spinal anesthesia; introducing the use of rubber gloves during surgery; pioneering the use of fine silk thread for sutures; developing techniques for stabilizing blood pressure during surgery; and inventing the radical mastectomy, blood transfusions, and surgical cures for hernias. Genius on the Edge is an illuminating biography of a complex and troubled man whose brilliance we continue to benefit from today.

The WEIRDest People in the World

The WEIRDest People in the World PDF Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710457
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.

Quackery

Quackery PDF Author: Lydia Kang
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
ISBN: 1523501855
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison—was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

Medical Muses

Medical Muses PDF Author: Asti Hustvedt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408822350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
In 1862 the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris became the epicenter of the study of hysteria, the mysterious illness then thought to affect half of all women. There, prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot's contentious methods caused furore within the church and divided the medical community. Treatments included hypnosis, piercing and the evocation of demons and, despite the controversy they caused, the experiments became a fascinating and fashionable public spectacle. Medical Muses tells the stories of the women institutionalised in the Salpêtrière. Theirs is a tale of science and ideology, medicine and the occult, of hypnotism, sadism, love and theatre. Combining hospital records, municipal archives, memoirs and letters, Medical Muses sheds new light on a crucial moment in psychiatric history.

The Checklist Manifesto

The Checklist Manifesto PDF Author: Atul Gawande
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429953381
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds. An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.

Every Patient Tells a Story

Every Patient Tells a Story PDF Author: Lisa Sanders
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0767922476
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer." A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory—making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment—only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU—bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent—and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness—the diagnosis—revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient’s story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients’ lives.

Rare Diseases and Orphan Products

Rare Diseases and Orphan Products PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309158060
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.