Showing titles in History & Commentary

Carolyn Jourdan spent many years as a congressional lawyer in Washington, D.C. Then she was called home to fill in for her mother as receptionist at her father's rural Tennessee doctor's office - assured it would only be for a few days.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated our fragility as a species. Humanity was attacked by a previously unknown virus that spread very rapidly, thanks to a speed of population mobility never before seen in human history. It succeeded in creating the complete upset of the global socioeconomic system. Such an event gives us an important stimulus to reevaluate health in the context of a circular system that encompasses humans and the environment in which we live. The key challenge we face is the discovery of novel paths to crisis resolution.

Heinrich Heine durchlebt 1832 in Paris die Zeit der Cholera und berichtet darüber für eine deutsche Zeitung. Zwischen Anteilnahme und Sarkasmus wechselnd beschreibt er des Volkes und der Behörden Umgang mit der Epidemie, dem der des 20sten Jahres im 21. Jahrhundert erschreckend ähnlich sieht.

Una storia francese del XIX secolo su un aspetto fondante della vita: il venire al mondo, la nascita, il nascere. Nella provincia rurale e soprattutto a Parigi si viene guidati in angoli talora ancora presenti e da riscoprire. E attraverso le vite e le opere di Marie-Anne Boivin e di Stéphane Tarnier si ricostruisce un passaggio epocale del modo di nascere: da arte secolare sviluppata nella pratica, tutta al femminile, delle levatrici ai primi apporti della nascente specialità ostetrico-ginecologica, subito rigorosamente difesa dal monopolio della scienza medica maschile.

Anschaulich und lebensnah erzählt Ronald D. Gerste von den umwälzenden Ereignissen zwischen 1840 und 1914, in der die Medizin ungeahnte Fortschritte machte. Mit der Entdeckung der Antisepsis und der Entwicklung der Anästhesie und der Röntgenstrahlung wurden Heilungserfolge möglich, an die bisher nicht zu denken war. Forscher, Ärzte und Mediziner von Robert Koch bis Wilhelm C. Röntgen begründeten die moderne Medizin. Ein packendes Porträt einer entfesselten Epoche!

The struggle against deadly microbes is endless. Diseases that have plagued human beings since ancient times still exist, new maladies make their way into the headlines, we are faced with vaccine shortages, and the threat of germ warfare has reemerged as a worldwide threat. In this riveting account, medical historian Howard Markel takes an eye-opening look at the fragility of the American public health system.

Between the years 1918 and 1920, influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history, killing at least 50 million people, more than half a million of them Americans. Yet despite the devastation, this catastrophic event seems but a forgotten moment in our nation's past. American Pandemic offers a much-needed corrective to the silence surrounding the influenza outbreak.

The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up, and how one American Army doctor’s discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy.

Decades of data cannot be ignored: African-American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology's framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research.

The story of the pandemic is the story of women. This riveting narrative offers an account of COVID-19, reminding us of women's leadership and resilience, reflecting back hope and humanity as we all figure out a new normal, together. Through intimate portraits of Canadian women in diverse situations and fields, Women of the Pandemic is a gripping narrative record of the early months of COVID-19, a clear-eyed look at women's struggles that highlights their creativity, perseverance, and resilience as they charted a new path forward during impossible times.

Mysterious and misunderstood, distorted by biblical imagery of disfigurement and uncleanness, Hansen's disease or leprosy has all but disappeared from America's consciousness. In Carville, Louisiana, the closed doors of the nation's last center for the treatment of leprosy open to reveal stories of sadness, separation, and even strength in the face of what was once a life-wrenching diagnosis. Drawn from interviews with living patients and extensive research in the leprosarium's archives, Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America tells the stories of former patients.

When Lightning Tickled History is a popular, narrative nonfiction, history audiobook designed as a supplemental history book for college students as well as a general interest audiobook. It is a light, breezy, historically-accurate collection of vignettes of incidents when lightning played in part in the drama of human affairs. It includes sections on lightning’s impact on the origin of life, Roman history, both Babylonian Captivities, Martin Luther, Benjamin Franklin, Bible, Charles Darwin, Hindenburg, Nicholas Tesla, and the role of lightning in the modern age.

There is a lot of misinformation thrown around today, especially Online. Headlines tell us to do this, not that - all in the name of living longer, better, thinner, younger. In Hype, Dr. Nina Shapiro distinguishes between the falsehoods and the evidence-backed truth. In her work at Harvard and UCLA, with more than 20 years of experience in both clinical and academic medicine, she helps patients make important health decisions everyday. She’s bringing those lessons to life here with a blend of science and personal stories to discuss her new definition of “a healthy life”.

La audio guida dedicata al fantastico mondo della scienza. La serie esclusiva "Audioscienza" di Area51 Publishing ti propone argomenti scientifici con un approccio divulgativo e un linguaggio semplice e diretto. Qui troverai informazioni e conoscenze che puoi portare sempre con te, come utili strumenti per conoscere te stesso e il mondo che ti circonda.

Er ist vielleicht der bekannteste Arzt Deutschlands. In seinem neuen Buch erzählt Eckart von Hirschhausen jedoch, was Sie wahrscheinlich bisher nicht über ihn wussten. Lange bevor er Medizin studierte, widmete er sich der Zauberei. Von der Jugendgruppe des Magischen Zirkels bis zur deutschen Meisterschaft vertiefte er sich in die Kunst der Täuschung. Somit kann er wie kein anderer beschreiben, wie viel magisches Denken bis heute in uns steckt.

Weaving together information from official sources and personal interviews, Barbara Tomblin gives the first full-length account of the US Army Nurse Corps in the Second World War. She describes how over 60,000 army nurses, all volunteers, cared for sick and wounded American soldiers in every theater of the war, serving in the jungles of the Southwest Pacific, the frozen reaches of Alaska and Iceland, the mud of Italy and northern Europe, or the heat and dust of the Middle East.

Rebecca Skloot and her best seller, The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, has created a lot of interest in the immortal HeLa cells that were taken from a 31-year-old black woman called Henrietta Lacks without her family's consent at the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore in 1951. She describes the story of how Henrietta Lacks died and how her cells were sent around the world for medical research.

The entire raison d'être for this mental health historical reader of the "paper of record", The New York Times, is to give the listener a window on the past and to include the listener on a journey of a time long ago. Seeing the original articles written by and about Sigmund Freud or his famous "psychoanalysis" as well as the many other issues we hear about transports us to another time and place.

What happens after we die? Does our consciousness vanish at the moment of death? Or does it continue in some form? Former Los Angeles Times national correspondent Erika Hayasaki sets out to explore the controversial science behind near-death experiences. The journey leads her to forge an unexpected bond with a distant family member who becomes her tour guide and ends up teaching her not only how awesome it can be to die but how precious it can be to live.

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.