On Their Own Terms


Book Description

In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.




Doctors


Book Description

From the author of How We Die, the extraordinary story of the development of modern medicine, told through the lives of the physician-scientists who paved the way. How does medical science advance? Popular historians would have us believe that a few heroic individuals, possessing superhuman talents, lead an unselfish quest to better the human condition. But as renowned Yale surgeon and medical historian Sherwin B. Nuland shows in this brilliant collection of linked life portraits, the theory bears little resemblance to the truth. Through the centuries, the men and women who have shaped the world of medicine have been not only very human, but also very much the products of their own times and places. Presenting compelling studies of great medical innovators and pioneers, Doctors gives us a fascinating history of modern medicine. Ranging from the legendary Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, to Andreas Vesalius, whose Renaissance masterwork on anatomy offered invaluable new insight into the human body, to Helen Taussig, founder of pediatric cardiology and co-inventor of the original "blue baby" operation, here is a volume filled with the spirit of ideas and the thrill of discovery.




Advances in Experimental Surgery


Book Description

Experimental surgery is an important link for the development in clinical surgery, research and teaching. Experimental surgery was part of the most important surgical discoveries in the past century. Since 1901 nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded to the pioneers had remarkable achievements in the basic or practical surgery. In recent 20 years, experimental surgery has achieved new advances, like laparoscopic and robotic surgery, tissue engineering, and gene therapy which are widely applied in clinic surgery. The present book covers wide experimental surgery in preclinical research models subdivided in two volumes. Volume I introduces surgical basic notions, techniques, and different surgical models involved in basic experimental surgery and review the biomechanical models, ischemia/reperfusion injury models, repair and regeneration models, and organ and tissue transplantation models, respectively. Volume II introduces several specific experimental models such as laparoscopic and bariatric experimental surgical models. The second volume also introduces graft-versus-host disease, and other experimental models. Review the advances and development of recent techniques such as tissue engineering, organ preservation, wound healing and scarring, gene therapy and robotic surgery. The book documents the enormous volume of knowledge we have acquired in the field of experimental surgery. In this book, we have invited experts from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, China, Japan, Korea, UK, Sweden, Netherland, Hungary and Turkey to contribute 36 chapters in the fields of their expertise. These two volumes are the compilation of basic experimental surgery and updated advances of new development in this field that will be invaluable to surgeons, residents, graduate students, surgical researchers, physicians, immunologists, veterinarians and nurses in surgery.




Surgical Anatomy


Book Description




Sociomedical Perspectives on Patient Care


Book Description

Social change has placed new demands on the practice of medicine, altering almost every aspect of patient care relationships. Just as medicine was encouraged to embrace the biological sciences some 100 years ago, recent directives indicate the importance of the social sciences in understanding biomedical practice. Humanistic challenges call for changes in curative and technological imperatives. In this book, social scientists contribute to such challenges by using social evidence to indicate appropriate new goals for health care in a changing environment. This book was designed to stimulate and challenge all those concerned with the human interactions that constitute medical practice. To encompass a wide range of topics, the authors include researchers; practicing physicians from the specialties of family, general, geriatric, pediatric, and oncological medicine; social and behavioral scientists; and public health representatives. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, they explore the ethical, economic, and social aspects of patient care. These essays draw on past studies of the patient-doctor relationship and generate new and important questions. They address social behavior in patient care as a way to approach theoretical issues pertinent to the social and medical sciences. The authors also use social variables to study patient care and suggest new areas of sociomedical inquiry and new approaches to medical practice, education, and research. Its cross-disciplinary approach and jargon-free writing make this book an important and accessible tool for physician, scholar, and student.




A Calculus of Suffering


Book Description

Analyzes the impact of anesthesia on nineteenth-century medicine, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of anesthesia, and explains how rules for its use were developed







Rising Above the Gathering Storm


Book Description

In a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas. This congressionally requested report by a pre-eminent committee makes four recommendations along with 20 implementation actions that federal policy-makers should take to create high-quality jobs and focus new science and technology efforts on meeting the nation's needs, especially in the area of clean, affordable energy: 1) Increase America's talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education; 2) Sustain and strengthen the nation's commitment to long-term basic research; 3) Develop, recruit, and retain top students, scientists, and engineers from both the U.S. and abroad; and 4) Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation. Some actions will involve changing existing laws, while others will require financial support that would come from reallocating existing budgets or increasing them. Rising Above the Gathering Storm will be of great interest to federal and state government agencies, educators and schools, public decision makers, research sponsors, regulatory analysts, and scholars.