Over the past forty years, the health humanities, previously called the medical humanities, has emerged as one of the most exciting fields for interdisciplinary scholarship, advancing humanistic inquiry into bioethics, human rights, health care, and the uses of technology. It has also helped inspire medical practitioners to engage in deeper reflection about the human elements of their practice.In Health Humanities Reader, editors Therese Jones, Delese Wear, and Lester D. F...

The final gripping instalment of the bestselling Four Streets trilogy which began with THE FOUR STREETS and continued in HIDE HER NAME.Christmas morning, 1963. Fifteen-year-old Kitty Doherty gives birth in a cold, unfriendly Irish convent. She knows her beautiful baby boy presents a huge danger to her family's Catholic community back in Liverpool's Four Streets. When her baby is adopted by a wealth...

Cancer touches more lives than you may think. According to the World Health Organization, one out of three women alive today, and one out of two men, will face a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime.To Ty Bollinger, this isn’t just a statistic. It’s personal. After losing seven members of his family to cancer over the course of a decade, Ty set out on a global quest to learn as much as he possibly could about cancer treatments and the medical industry that surrounds t...

Over the last twenty-five years, medicine and consumerism have been on an unchecked collision course, but, until now, the fallout from their impact has yet to be fully uncovered. A writer for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, Carl Elliott ventures into the uncharted dark side of medicine, shining a light on the series of social and legislative changes that have sacrificed old-style doctoring to the values of consumer capitalism. Along the way, he introduce...

"An in-depth, well-researched, and thoughtful exploration of the 'fat boom' in America." — The Boston GlobeLow carb, high protein, raw foods . . . despite our seemingly endless obsession with fad diets, the startling truth is that six out of ten Americans are overweight or obese. In Fat Land, award-winning nutrition and health journalist Greg Critser examines the facts and societal factors behind the sensational headlines, taking on everyt...

A doctor discovers the surprising truth about marijuanaNo substance on earth is as hotly debated as marijuana. Opponents claim it’s dangerous, addictive, carcinogenic, and a gateway to serious drug abuse. Fans claim it as a wonder drug, treating cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, glaucoma, arthritis, migraines, PTSD, and insomnia. Patients suffering from these conditions need—and deserve—hard facts based on medical evidence, not hysteria and superstition.

Obesity is the public health crisis of the twenty-first century. Over 150 million Americans are overweight or obese, and across the globe an estimated 1.5 billion are affected. In A Big Fat Crisis, Dr. Deborah A. Cohen has created a major new work that will transform the conversation surrounding the modern weight crisis. Based on her own extensive research, as well as the latest insights from behavioral economics and cognitive science, Cohen reveals what drives the obesity epidemi...

Health care costs make up nearly a fifth of U.S. gross domestic product, but health care is a peculiar thing to buy and sell. Both a scarce resource and a basic need, it involves physical and emotional vulnerability and at the same time it operates as big business. Patients have little choice but to trust those who provide them care, but even those providers confront a great deal of medical uncertainty about the services they offer. Selling Our Souls looks at the contradictions in...

Practice-based text and illustrations make this handbook an invaluable reference guide for primary care physicians who are treating patients who are obese or who are approaching obesity. A detailed discussion covering the complexities of the metabolic syndrome is also included in this handbook.

The authors, world-renowned headache practitioners, have written a comprehensive review of the management of headache that will prove useful to both physicians and interested patients. Special attention is given to both pharmacologic therapies and nonpharmacologic treatments including dietary restrictions and relaxation exercises. This useful guide covers the epidemiology, classification, pathophysiology, clinical diagnosis, and treatment of headache, and discusses tension-type headache, m...

Written by one of the nation’s foremost experts on the diagnosis and treatment of surgical infections, Contemporary Guide to Surgical Infections™ is divided into two segments. Segment 1—Sections 1 through 10—defines and characterizes surgical infections and discusses the general principles of diagnosis and management, including routine operations and potential postoperative complications. Specific sections expand on these concepts to provide helpful information for clinicians to consider w...

Burdened with perennially rising costs and responsible for providing health insurance to more than one sixth of all Americans, Medicare in its original form is fiscally and demographically unsustainable. In light of dramatic reforms under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this book provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of Medicare. Eleanor D. Kinney explains how the ACA addresses systemic problems of cost and volume inflation, quality assurance, and fraud. Recognizing the pot...