New Books In Medicine

“Appalachia was among the first places where the malaise of opioid pills hit the nation in the mid-1990s, ensnaring coal miners, loggers, furniture makers, and their kids.” This is how journalist Beth Macy premises her new book, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America (Little, Brown, & Company, 2018). She then sets out to share a history of how and why this happened. Macy offers readers a familiar story of industrial exploitation and economic distress in central Appalachia, only, instead of focusing on the coal industry’s role in this history, Macy describes exploitation that resulted from big pharmaceutical companies selling large quantities of prescription opioids in central Appalachia. Building on the work of authors such as Sam Quinones (Dreamland), Anna Lembke (Drug Dealer, MD), and Keith Wailoo (Pain), Macy argues that the sale and use of prescription opioids increased in part after medical professionals began to push the idea that new standards for the assessment and

What makes you who you are? What makes you distinct from me? What is identity? In the book You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity (Notting Hill Editions, 2016), Baroness Susan Greenfield scientifically dives into concepts of identity from, a biological perspective, that are usually reserved for philosophers. In this interview Dr. Greenfield discusses individual and cultural identity, what they mean, and how they are formed. She talks about why people believe irrational things that all evidence points to being incorrect, such as men are superior to women. She even talks about the effects of digital and social media on the brain. Listen to this interview and explore the neuroscience of identity. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jeremy is curious and passionate about all things healthcare, which means he’s always up for a good discussion! Reach him at jeremyccorr@gmail.com.Learn more about

You should never trust celebrities, politicians, or activists for health information. Why? Because they are not scientists! Scientists often cannot compete with celebrities when it comes to charm or evoking emotion. Science is complex and often cannot provide the easy “soundbite” worthy answers that celebrities and politicians truly comprehend. Americans are flooded with misleading or incorrect claims about health risks. In his book Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information (Columbia University Press, 2018), Dr. Paul Offit sets the record straight. In this book, Dr. Offit shares his advice from his years of experience battling misinformation in science and public health. He has often found himself in the crosshairs of the anti-vaccine movement and other pseudoscience groups. He has received a significant amount of hate mail and even death threats for speaking out in the name of good science and the health of mankind. Bad science isn’t just wrong,

What is the landscape of our cannabis knowledge? In his new book Jacob Levine author of the Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context (Jacob Levine, 2018) gives readers an overview of the perceptions, opinions, and arguments surrounding cannabis present in today’s political discourse. Levine encourages the reader to “read between the lines” with the information that is out there, thinking through confirmation bias and issues like correlation and causality. This book emphasizes the context of our knowledge about marijuana. For instance, Levine gives insights into the racialized history of early marijuana prohibition. The book exposes readers to the various forms of cannabis all the way through medical use and legalization. This book explains cannabis in a clear and accessible manner. Parts of this book could be used in any Sociology course discussion about drugs, and the book would be a good addition or supplement to any course around the social context of drugs or racialization and history of po

In this episode, cross posted from the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Michael Kearney, a palliative care physician who takes an interpersonal, integrative approach to healing. Dr. Kearney shares with us how he has had to learn to “breathe underwater” and allow pain to move through him and he discusses his new book: The Nest in the Stream: Lessons from Nature on Being with Pain (Parallax Press, 2018). Michael Kearney trained at St Christopher’s Hospice in London with Dame Cicely Saunders, pioneer of the modern hospice movement.  He later returned to his Ireland as medical director at Our Lady’s Hospice in Dublin.  In the early 2000’s he moved to North America, and now lives and works in Santa Barbara, California.  Throughout his career, Michael has been interested in whole person care and approaches that combine medical treatment with the innate healing potential of body, soul, and spirit.  He draws on depth psychology, mythology, Buddhist philosophy, indigenous

The history of mankind is interlinked with microbes. As humans evolved and became more advanced, microbes evolved right along with us. Through infection, disease, and pandemic they have helped shape human culture and civilization. In her book Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped our History (Oxford University Press, 2018), Dorothy H. Crawford details how changes in the way humans lived, spanning from hunter-gatherer to modern crowding and air travel, have been affected and shaped by the microbes that infect them. She discusses how microbes such as smallpox, flu, and malaria evolved to be so effective. She explores the cause and effect of some of the major epidemics in history such as the Plague of Athens, the Justinian Plague, the Black Death, and even SARS. Listen to this interview to learn about the history of microbes and their impact on mankind. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jere

In Quilts and Health (Indiana University Press, 2017), Marsha MacDowell and her colleagues examine the phenomenon of health-related quilts, of which there are millions around the world. In fact, and as this book documents, almost any illness, disease, or condition is likely to be associated in some way with quiltmaking. Quilts are made to support health education and patient advocacy, to raise funds, to memorialize those passed, to promote personal well-being, and to comfort others in distress. Some quilts even document medical history; for example, Ohio-based quilter Helen Murrell created a piece that serves as a statement of outrage for the unjust treatment of 600 African-American men who, without their knowledge or consent, were subjected to a forty-year medical experiment of the United States government.  During the experiment, 399 men were deliberately infected with syphilis and were allowed to go untreated, even after a cure was developed. Quilts and Health explores the myriad connections that are forge

Pablo Gomez‘s The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) examines the strategies by which health and spiritual practitioners in the Caribbean claimed knowledge about the natural world during the 17th century.  With penetrating research and analysis, Gomez illustrates how these specialists of African descent devised localized ways of knowing health, nature, and the body, while working within cosmopolitan Caribbean societies in which ritual traditions from around the Atlantic intersected.  In a region that was of majority African descent, these practitioners rose to become the intellectual leaders, devising epistemological innovations that spoke to, engaged with and were parallel with European scientific developments, but have hitherto never been included in intellectual history. Pablo Gomez is Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisc

Treatment of addiction often focuses on abstinence or ‘harm reduction.’ While many people benefit greatly from such approaches, the underlying pain and heartache often go untreated, leaving individuals vulnerable to relapse. Focusing on the emotional undercurrents of addiction can help individuals address, once and for all, the deep-seated factors that drive them to substances in the first place. This approach is explained and elaborated by Dr. Edward Khantzian in his new book, Treating Addiction: Beyond the Pain (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). In the book, he introduces his ‘self-medication hypothesis’ and explains what it adds to our understanding addiction relative to theories focused solely on pleasure-seeking or self-destruction. In our interview, we discuss how he arrived at this combined humanistic and psychoanalytic approach, and he offers compelling arguments to support its application. This interview will be relevant for anyone who suffers with, treats, or loves someone struggling with substance a

Metabolism, behavior, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty, and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein takes us on a journey through the unusual history of these potent chemicals from a basement filled with jarred nineteenth-century brains to a twenty-first-century hormone clinic in Los Angeles. Brimming with fascinating anecdotes, illuminating new medical research, and humorous details, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018) introduces the leading scientists who made life-changing discoveries about the hormone imbalances that ail us, as well as the charlatans who used those discoveries to peddle false remedies. Epstein exposes the humanity at the heart of hormone science with her rich cast of characters, including a 1920s doctor promoting vasectomies as a way to boost libido, a female medi

In The Disappearing Spoon, bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code (Bay Back Books, 2013), he explores the wonders of the magical building block of life: DNA. There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK’s bronze skin (it wasn’t a tan) to Einstein’s genius. They prove that Neanderthals and humans bred thousands of years more recently than any of us would feel comfortable thinking. They can even allow some people, because of the exceptional flexibility of their thumbs and fingers, to become truly singular violinists. Kean’s vibrant storytelling once again makes science entertaining, explaining human history and whimsy while showing how DNA will influence our species’ future. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthca

Whether through the anxiety of mutually assured destruction or the promise of decolonization throughout Asia and Africa, Cold War politics had a peculiar temporality. In Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Joanna Radin explores the conjuncture of time and temperature in Cold War “salvage biology” projects. Cryobiology, genetic epidemiology, and freezer anthropology constructed a dense and tangled global infrastructure of blood circulation. By following these circuits, Radin weaves a narrative about the Cold War human sciences that takes readers up to present ethical debates about the insufficiency of informed consent and the need to better involve communities whose vital materials have been taken for the sake of biomedical research. This book will be of interest to all historians of science, technology, and medicine, as well as to anthropologists and scholars working in Native American and Indigenous Studies. Mikey McGovern is a PhD candidate in Princeton Un

Personal health information often seems locked-down: protected by patient privacy laws, encased in electronic record systems (EHRs) and difficult to share or transport by and between physicians and hospitals. But as Adam Tanner argues in his latest book, Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records (Beacon Press, 2017), our medical information is anything but static. He describes a vast and growing industry of trade in patient data, emanating from EHRs to pharmacy and drug company sales records. These data – ostensibly stripped of identifying information – are sold and bought largely to help medical and pharmaceutical companies better market their products (as well as for some research). Tanner asks, are these data completely safe? Could they be re-identified and threaten patient privacy? How might this trade in data impact patient care and physician practice? While consumer data breaches plague other industries, Tanner urges us as consumers, medical practitioners and society

Londa Schiebinger‘s new book Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford University Press, 2017) examines the contexts, programs, and ethics of medical experimentation in the British and French West Indies from the 1760s to the early 19th century.  Physicians were enlisted into the plantation systems to ensure the greatest profitability of the enslaved workforces. European practices, however, were ill-equipped for the tropics, and so many looked towards the knowledge of enslaved populations for effective remedies.  Schiebinger analyses the circuits and structures of this knowledge exchange within the sugar plantation complex and between these islands and Europe.  She brilliantly illuminates how and why some practices were adopted and appropriated, why others were prohibited, and how the colonial crucible so often resulted in the loss of vibrant medical traditions and knowledge.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice

In Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India (NYU Press, 2016), Daisy Deomampo explores relationships between Indian surrogates, their families, aspiring parents from all over the world, egg donors and doctors in a setting marked by hierarchies of income, race, nationality and gender. Based on three years of fieldwork in Mumbai, India, Deomampo shows how assisted reproductive technologies like IVF, sperm and egg donation, surrogacy and artificial insemination are not neutral scientific advances that enable parenthood, but in fact entrench “certain power relations, notions of gender, and particular constructions of the family.” The transnational surrogacy industry is an example of “stratified reproduction”, a term first coined by Shellee Cohen in her study of female immigrant domestic workers in New York City, to understand the deeply unequal political, economic and social conditions that shape women’s reproductive labor. Deomampo approaches gest

Our neighbors on other planets look with puzzlement at the United States, located on the beautiful planet Earth. Despite amazing knowledge, discovery, and skill, healthcare delivery in this country is expensive, episodic, not customer-friendly, and much better for citizens with lots of money than those with less. Dr. Stephen Klasko’s book asks if this country can find the resolve to embrace change, learn from other planets (or at least other countries and industries on this planet), and create an optimistic future for an ideal delivery system? In a picture story that embraces disruption and transformation, this journey through time and space offers a humorous exploration of the weaknesses of the American healthcare delivery system. Bless This Mess: A Picture Story of Healthcare in America (Lulu Publishing Services, 2018) asks how we might re-imagine how we teach, how we care, and how we put an end to health disparities … and get us closer to the holy grail of a believable understandable bill! The challe

Melanie Kiechle‘s Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America (University of Washington Press, 2017) takes us into the cellars, rivers, gutters and similar smelly recesses of American cities in the 19th century. In the decades on either side of the fulcrum between “miasma theory” and the modern germ theory of disease, Americans typically linked smell with healthfulness, or lack thereof. In places like Chicago, New York and Boston, as industrializing businesses generated ever-greater amounts of noxious fumes, medical professionals, policymakers and ordinary people employed various techniques to follow stenches to their source–not always accurately. In a fascinating urban history that centers around the “invisible sense,” Kiechle examines not only what 19th-century cities smelled like, but how people’s thinking about smells changed and how that knowledge came to change their urban environments. This book is a highly creative and unusual gl

French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot is perhaps most well known today from the images of his “hysterical” female patients featured in Bourneville’s Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière. While not diminishing the epistemological and aesthetic importance of “the image” to Charcot, Jonathan W. Marshall argues in Performing Neurology: The Dramaturgy of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) that the work of the French neurologist is best understood through the lens of dramaturgy. He demonstrates the spatial and temporal implications of Charcot’s neurological practice as steeped in neo-classical aesthetics and deeply attuned to scenography, showmanship, and stage production. Using convincing evidence drawn from critiques of Charcot, Marshall demonstrates in Performing Neurology that the power and danger of mixing medicine and theatrics was not lost on Charcot’s contemporaries.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything (Workman Publishing Company, 2017) 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, Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen sea

Professor Martha Few’s For All Humanity: Mesoamerican and Colonial Medicine in Enlightenment Guatemala (University of Arizona Press, 2015) describes the implementation of public health reforms in late eighteenth-century Guatemala and the diverse ways that indigenous communities engaged and resisted these programs.  Contrary to expectations, colonists were often ahead of administrators in Spain in adopting new medical methods, such as inoculating patients against smallpox.  But bringing these to rural communities, some with a significant degree of autonomy, required adaptation and compromise; and if resistance was stiff, medical officers reacted with the persecution of indigenous practices in ways that mirrored the church’s anti-idolatry purges.  By bringing Guatemala and its native residents into the networks of Atlantic medicine in the eighteenth century, For All Humanity illuminates the plurality of medical cultures that interacted in the production of the Enlightenment. Martha Few is Professor of Latin Ame