A Doctor's Aim: Memoir of a London Surgeon describes one hospital doctor's fifty years in medicine and surgery. Outlining the drama of the surgeon's daily toil, his travels in surgery throughout the world, the bravery of the patients he has treated and the ineptitude of the administrative system that employed him, Peter McDonald tells it as it is, with humour and piercing insight.
Becoming a Doctors' Doctor is author and psychiatrist Michael F. Myers' revelation of the fascinating and sometimes tragic encounters with doctors as patients. Physicians are expected to be resilient and to carry the burdens of others. But all too often, the on-the-job stresses can result in mental illness. Beginning with his roommate's suicide in the first year of medical school, Myers found himself craving to learn more about physicians and their vulnerabilities. In this memoir of his thirty-five year career, Myers shares vignettes of treating doctors for depression, alcoholism, burnout, and more. He reveals the stigma physicians face when asking for help and the struggles they endure while keeping others healthy and safe. A psychiatrist with a passion for helping physicians, Myers highlights the importance of mental health treatment for doctors and the social and emotional costs of serving the community. Beautifully written, Becoming a Doctors' Doctor heralds the many patients to whom he has devoted his practice and career.
The 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist, International Bestseller, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2017! “Marsh has retired, which means he’s taking a thorough inventory of his life. His reflections and recollections make Admissions an even more introspective memoir than his first, if such a thing is possible.” —The New York Times "Consistently entertaining...Honesty is abundantly apparent here--a quality as rare and commendable in elite surgeons as one suspects it is in memoirists." —The Guardian "Disarmingly frank storytelling...his reflections on death and dying equal those in Atul Gawande's excellent Being Mortal." —The Economist Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student, and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties, and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them. Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.
Elizabeth Blackwell, though born in England, was reared in the United States and was the first woman to receive a medical degree here, obtaining it from the Geneva Medical College, Geneva, New York, in 1849. A pioneer in opening the medical profession to women, she founded hospitals and medical schools for women in both the United States and England. She was a lecturer and writer as well as an able physician and organizer. -- H.W. Orr.
Rebelling against the contraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman in a class of men. Her encounters with the other students- as well as the male and female corpses in the autopsy room...
Froggy is going to the doctor for a checkup, and he's feeling a little nervous. "What if the doctor wants to give me a shot?" he thinks. He worries as he dresses and then he can't sit still in the waiting room. Finally, it's time to go in and change for his exam, but . . . OOOPS! He's forgotten his underwear! And that's just the beginning of Froggy's hilarious doctor visit that ends reassuringly with a gold star and a lollipop.
#1 International Bestseller: A frontline trauma surgeon tells his “riveting” true story of operating in the world’s most dangerous war zones (The Times). For more than twenty-five years, surgeon David Nott has volunteered in some of the world’s most perilous conflict zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major metropolitan hospital. He is now widely acknowledged as the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. War Doctor is his extraordinary story, encompassing his surgeries in nearly every major conflict zone since the end of the Cold War, as well as his struggles to return to a “normal” life and routine after each trip. Culminating in his recent trips to war-torn Syria—and the untold story of his efforts to help secure a humanitarian corridor out of besieged Aleppo to evacuate some 50,000 people—War Doctor is a heart-stopping and moving blend of medical memoir, personal journey, and nonfiction thriller that provides unforgettable, at times raw, insight into the human toll of war. “Superb . . . You are constantly amazed that men such as Nott can witness the extraordinary cruelties of the human race, so many and so foul, yet keep going.” —Sunday Times “Gripping and fascinating medical stories.” —Kirkus Reviews
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Search for Common Ground Award Middle East Institute Award Finalist, Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Stavros Niarchos Prize for Survivorship Nobel Peace Prize nominee "A necessary lesson against hatred and revenge" -Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate "In this book, Doctor Abuelaish has expressed a remarkable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation that describes the foundation for a permanent peace in the Holy Land." -President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize laureate By turns inspiring and heart-breaking, hopeful and horrifying, I Shall Not Hate is Izzeldin Abuelaish's account of an extraordinary life. A Harvard-trained Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and "who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians" (New York Times), Abuelaish has been crossing the lines in the sand that divide Israelis and Palestinians for most of his life - as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the line, as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East. And, most recently, as the father whose daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers on January 16, 2009, during Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip. His response to this tragedy made news and won him humanitarian awards around the world. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, Abuelaish called for the people in the region to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be "the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis."
In this quietly revolutionary work of social observation and medical philosophy, Booker Prize-winning writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr train their gaze on an English country doctor and find a universal man--one who has taken it upon himself to recognize his patient's humanity when illness and the fear of death have made them unrecognizable to themselves. In the impoverished rural community in which he works, John Sassall tend the maimed, the dying, and the lonely. He is not only the dispenser of cures but the repository of memories. And as Berger and Mohr follow Sassall about his rounds, they produce a book whose careful detail broadens into a meditation on the value we assign a human life. First published thirty years ago, A Fortunate Man remains moving and deeply relevant--no other book has offered such a close and passionate investigation of the roles doctors play in their society. "In contemporary letters John Berger seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience." --Susan Sontag
Women's work is a matter of life and death Nora Beady, the only female student at a prestigious medical school in Bologna, is a rarity. In the 19th century women are expected to remain at home and raise children, so her unconventional, indelicate ambitions to become a licensed surgeon offend the men around her. Under constant scrutiny, Nora's successes are taken for granted; her mistakes used as proof that women aren't suited to the field. Everything changes when she allies herself with Magdalena Morenco, the sole female doctor on-staff. Together the two women develop new techniques to improve a groundbreaking surgery: the Cesarean section. It's a highly dangerous procedure and the research is grueling, but even worse is the vitriolic response from men. Most don't trust the findings of women, and many can choose to deny their wives medical care. Already facing resistance on all sides, Nora is shaken when she meets a patient who will die without the surgery. If the procedure is successful, her work could change the world. But a failure could cost everything: precious lives, Nora's career, and the role women will be allowed to play in medicine.
