Author: Patricia Sauthoff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197553265
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Illness and Immortality examines a medieval Sanskrit text, the Netra Tantra, which is devoted to health and healing through a yogic practice dedicated to the chanting of mantras, the building of mandalas, and meditation. Patricia Sauthoff examines the role of such ritual elements in rites to alleviate illness and death. She includes analysis of the various forms of the deity Amrtesa or Mrtyuñjaya (Conqueror of Death), the nature of mantra, and the relationship between the tantric practitioner and the patient. This work explores what is meant by immortality within the medieval context and how one goes about attaining it. It asks how ritual alleviates illness, what role the deity plays in health and healing, and finally who has access to the rites described within the text. Central to this study is the conception of a body vulnerable to demons and reliant on deities for continued existence, and how the three yogic bodies (sthula, suksma, and para) play a role in physical and spiritual well-being. Featuring new translations of large sections of the Netra Tantra, the book offers readers various points of entry into the text so that tantric practitioners and scholars alike can access the influential and important concepts and practices found within this long-revered but under-studied work.
Author: Adam Gollner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439109435
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.
Author: Rebecca Skloot
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307589382
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE • ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS • WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Financial Times • New York • Independent (U.K.) • Times (U.K.) • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
Author: Tessa Miller
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250751462
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
"Should be read by anyone with a body. . . . Relentlessly researched and undeniably smart." —The New York Times Named one of BuzzFeed's "Best Books of 2021" What Doesn't Kill You is the riveting account of a young journalist’s awakening to chronic illness, weaving together personal story and reporting to shed light on living with an ailment forever. Tessa Miller was an ambitious twentysomething writer in New York City when, on a random fall day, her stomach began to seize up. At first, she toughed it out through searing pain, taking sick days from work, unable to leave the bathroom or her bed. But when it became undeniable that something was seriously wrong, Miller gave in to family pressure and went to the hospital—beginning a years-long nightmare of procedures, misdiagnoses, and life-threatening infections. Once she was finally correctly diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, Miller faced another battle: accepting that she will never get better. Today, an astonishing three in five adults in the United States suffer from a chronic disease—a percentage expected to rise post-Covid. Whether the illness is arthritis, asthma, Crohn's, diabetes, endometriosis, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, or any other incurable illness, and whether the sufferer is a colleague, a loved one, or you, these diseases have an impact on just about every one of us. Yet there remains an air of shame and isolation about the topic of chronic sickness. Millions must endure these disorders not only physically but also emotionally, balancing the stress of relationships and work amid the ever-present threat of health complications. Miller segues seamlessly from her dramatic personal experiences into a frank look at the cultural realities (medical, occupational, social) inherent in receiving a lifetime diagnosis. She offers hard-earned wisdom, solidarity, and an ultimately surprising promise of joy for those trying to make sense of it all.
Author: Abookaday
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781535281218
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
This review of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande provides a chapter by chapter detailed summary followed by an analysis and critique of the strengths and weaknesses of this book. Gawande draws on clinical studies, case histories and stories from his own experiences as a doctor and a son to illuminate the subject of mortality relative to modern medical systems. His treatment of the subject covers a broad range of institutions and individuals that shape the lives of the aged and terminally ill. The central thesis of the book is that the experience of the end of life has been problematized and addressed by medical models that place extending life over quality of life and institutional frameworks that place safety and efficiency over the ability for people to have autonomy over the last part of their lives. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a professor at the Harvard Medical School. He is a writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of three New York Times bestselling books. Download your copy today! Available on PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. (c) 2015 All Rights Reserved
Author: Anatole Broyard
Publisher: Fawcett
ISBN: 0449908348
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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Book Description
Anatole Broyard, long-time book critic, book review editor, and essayist for the New York Times, wants to be remembered. He will be, with this collection of irreverent, humorous essays he wrote concerning the ordeals of life and death—many of which were written during the battle with cancer that led to his death in 1990. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “A heartbreakingly eloquent and unsentimental meditation on mortality . . . Some writing is so rich and well-spoken that commentary is superfluous, even presumptuous. . . . Read this book, and celebrate a cultured spirit made fine, it seems, by the coldest of touches.”—Los Angeles Times “Succeeds brilliantly . . . Anatole Broyard has joined his father but not before leaving behind a legacy rich in wisdom about the written word and the human condition. He has died. But he lives as a writer and we are the wealthier for it.”—The Washington Post Book World “A virtuoso performance . . . The central essays of Intoxicated By My Illness were written during the last fourteen months of Broyard’s life. They are held in a gracious setting of his previous writings on death in life and literature, including a fictionalized account of his own father’s dying of cancer. The title refers to his reaction to the knowledge that he had a life-threatening illness. His literary sensibility was ignited, his mind flooded with image and metaphor, and he decided to employ these intuitive gifts to light his way into the darkness of his disease and its treatment. . . . Many other people have chronicled their last months . . . Few are as vivid as Broyard, who brilliantly surveys a variety of books on illness and death along the way as he draws us into his writer’s imagination, set free now by what he describes as the deadline of life. . . . [A] remarkable book, a lively man of dense intelligence and flashing wit who lets go and yet at the same time comtains himself in the style through which he remains alive.”—The New York Times Book Review “Despite much pain, Anatole Broyard continued to write until the final days of his life. He used his writing to rage, in the words of Dylan Thomas, against the dying of the light. . . . Shocking, no-holds-barred and utterly exquisite.”—The Baltimore Sun
Author: Stanley Keleman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780394487878
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
"This book is about dying, not about death. We are always dying a big, always giving things up, always having things taken away. Is there a person alive who isn't really curious about what dying is for them? Is there a person alive who wouldn't like to go to their dying full of excitement, without fear and without morbidity? This books tells you how." -- Front cover.
Author: Gerald Epstein
Publisher: Gerald Epstein
ISBN: 1883148049
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Who among us has not wished for eternal life? In Healing Into Immortality, Gerald N. Epstein, MD, a pioneer in mindbody medicine for 25 years, offers a prescription that extends life and prevents illness.In this revolutionary book, Dr. Epstein shows the practical meaning of these laws in our daily life. How many of us realize that we steal time when we are late; that we murder ourselves when we feel depressed; that we commit adultery when we mix business with pleasure?
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455535885
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
From the celebrated author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how we are killing ourselves to live longer, not better. A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Natural Causes describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much about what is inevitable. One by one, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guide our attempts to live a long, healthy life -- from the importance of preventive medical screenings to the concepts of wellness and mindfulness, from dietary fads to fitness culture. But Natural Causes goes deeper -- into the fundamental unreliability of our bodies and even our "mind-bodies," to use the fashionable term. Starting with the mysterious and seldom-acknowledged tendency of our own immune cells to promote deadly cancers, Ehrenreich looks into the cellular basis of aging, and shows how little control we actually have over it. We tend to believe we have agency over our bodies, our minds, and even over the manner of our deaths. But the latest science shows that the microscopic subunits of our bodies make their own "decisions," and not always in our favor. We may buy expensive anti-aging products or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these things offer only the illusion of control. How to live well, even joyously, while accepting our mortality -- that is the vitally important philosophical challenge of this book. Drawing on varied sources, from personal experience and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, Natural Causes examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich then tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of how we might better prepare ourselves for the end -- while still reveling in the lives that remain to us.
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439170916
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 624
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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.
