In Search of Good Medicine


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Medicine Quest


Book Description

In Medicine Quest, Mark Plotkin moves beyond the Amazon rainforests of his classic Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice to describe the ongoing race to find new medicines for intractable diseases such as AIDS,cancer, diabetes, and tuberculosis in far-flung places all over the world. While highlighting the unlikely marriage of natural products, indigenous wisdom, and biotechnology, Plotkin details discoveries that are producing stunning results in the laboratory: painkillers from the skin of rainforest frogs, anticoagulants from leech saliva, and antitumor agents from snake venom. An entertaining and educational weave of medicine, ecology, ethnobotany, history, exploration, and adventure, Medicine Quest will thrill scientists, naturalists, and armchair explorers, and heighten our appreciation for the inexhaustible therapeutic potential of our natural world.




Green Medicine


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Personalised Medicine, Individual Choice and the Common Good


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Asks whether personalised medicine is superior to 'one-size-fits-all' treatment. Does it elevate individual choice above the common good?




The Finest Traditions of My Calling


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"Patients and doctors alike are keenly aware that the medical world is in the midst of great change. We live in an era of continuous healthcare reforms, many of which focus on high volume, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. This compelling, thoughtful book is the response of a practicing physician who explains how population-based reforms are diminishing the relationship between doctor and patients, to the detriment of both. As an antidote to stubbornly held traditions, Dr. Abraham M. Nussbaum suggests ways that doctors and patients can learn what it means to be ill and to seek medical assistance. Drawing on personal stories, validated studies, and neglected history, the author develops a series of metaphors to explore a doctor's role in different healthcare reform scenarios: scientist, technician, author, gardener, teacher, servant, and witness. Each role shapes what physicians see when they encounter a patient. Dr. Nussbaum cautions that true healthcare reform can happen only when those who practice medicine can see, and be seen by, their patients as fellow creatures. His memoir makes a hopeful appeal for change, and his insights reveal the direction that change must take."--Jacket flap.




Good Medicine


Book Description

Filled with the latest thinking on traditional, holistic and alternative care, "Good Medicine" represents a change in approaching illness and attaining optimal health. This authoritative and easy-to-understand book offers a new perspective on how human beings are put together, integrating the physical body and the spirit within.




Medicine, Rationality and Experience


Book Description

Biomedicine is often thought to provide a scientific account of the human body and of illness. In this view, non-Western and folk medical systems are regarded as systems of 'belief' and subtly discounted. This is an impoverished perspective for understanding illness and healing across cultures, one that neglects many facets of Western medical practice and obscures its kinship with healing in other traditions. Drawing on his research in several American and Middle Eastern medical settings, in this 1993 book Professor Good develops a critical, anthropological account of medical knowledge and practice. He shows how physicians and healers enter and inhabit distinctive worlds of meaning and experience. He explores how stories or illness narratives are joined with bodily experience in shaping and responding to human suffering and argues that moral and aesthetic considerations are present in routine medical practice as in other forms of healing.




The Medical Book


Book Description

A lively, accessible, and fully illustrated guide to the history of medicine, from ancient practices to cutting edge innovations. Clifford Pickover continues his popular series that includes The Physics Book and The Math Book with this volume chronicling the advancement of medicine in 250 entertaining, illustrated landmark events. Touching on such diverse subspecialties as genetics, pharmacology, neurology, sexology, and immunology, Pickover intersperses “obvious” historical milestones—the Hippocratic Oath, general anesthesia, the Human Genome Project—with unexpected and intriguing topics like “truth serum,” the use of cocaine in eye surgery, and face transplants.




The Truth about Big Medicine


Book Description

This title drills deeply into the broken American health care industry--demonstrating how the medical industry's self-serving interests have run afoul of safe care. Written by passionate experts in multiple relevant fields, this book shows readers how the system works, why it works this way, how it harms and often kills people and how we can fix it.




The Indiana University School of Medicine


Book Description

The Indiana University School of Medicine: A History tells the story of the school and its faculty and students in fascinating detail. Founded in the early 20th century, the Indiana University School of Medicine went on to become a leading medical facility, preparing students for careers in medicine and providing healthcare across Indiana. Historian William Schneider draws on a treasure trove of historical images and documents, to recount how the school began life as the Medical Department in 1903, and later became the Indiana University School of Medicine, which was established as a full four-year school after merging with two private schools in 1908. Thanks to state support and local philanthropy, it quickly added new hospitals, which by the 1920s made it the core of a medical center for the city of Indianapolis and the only medical school in the state. From modest beginnings, and the challenges of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the medical school has grown to meet the demands of every generation, becoming the leading resource for not only the education of physicians and for the conducting of medical research but also for the care and treatment of patients at the multi-hospital medical center. Today, the school boasts an annual income of over $1.5 billion, with over 2,000 full-time faculty teaching 1,350 MD students, and over $250 million in external research funding.