The Placebo Chronicles
The Placebo Chronicles

Author: Douglas Farrago, M.D.

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Published: 2009-07-08

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0307489590

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

True Tales of the ridiculous, the silly, and the just plain weird cases doctors face—lampooning the medical bureaucracy that makes practicing medicine and getting medical care such a headache. Doctors have a sick sense of humor. This is the deep, dark, and hilarious secret of the medical profession revealed by the irreverent Dr. Douglas Farrago in his popular satirical magazine, Placebo Journal—affectionately known by its thousands of fanatic readers as “Mad magazine for doctors” and called, by U.S. News.com, “raunchy, adolescent, and very funny.” Now, in The Placebo Chronicles, Dr. Farrago has compiled the best of the most outrageous and uproarious true stories to come out of the ERs and examination rooms of doctors all over the country. Submitted by actual physicians, these are the stories they tell each other at cocktail parties and in doctors’ lounges, trading sidesplitting and truly unusual tales of their most embarrassing medical moments, the grossest things they’ve ever seen in medicine, their favorite Munchausen patients, and much more, including “The X-Ray Files”—mind-boggling anecdotes and images of the oddest foreign objects doctors have removed from patients. Not for the faint of heart, the humor in The Placebo Chronicles is brutally funny—just what the doctor ordered to guard against the ill effects of an M.D.’s worst enemies: the Medical Axis of Evil, a.k.a. drug companies, HMOs, and malpractice insurers. Fully illustrated with fake advertisements—for pseudopharmaceuticals like OxyCotton Candy and Indifferex (the mediocre antidepressant)—this refreshingly honest collection invites doctors and patients alike to share the laughter, a liberal dose of the very best medicine.

The Placebo Effect
The Placebo Effect

Author: David Rotenberg

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-02-07

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1439172641

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book in a new series starring an acting teacher with a surprising talent. Decker Roberts has the dangerous gift of detecting the truth. For years this talent proved to be a lucrative side line to his acting teaching. Only his closest friends know, and he keeps his identity secret from the companies that pay him to tell them if the people they are planning to hire are truthful. But Decker’s carefully compartmentalized life starts to fall apart. He realized that he must have heard something in one of his “truth telling” sessions that someone didn’t want him to know. Decker has to go on the run and figure out why he’s been targeted. There’s also a government agent hunting him who seems to know absolutely everything about Decker Roberts’ identities—real and false—and other people of “his kind.”

Bruised and Broken
Bruised and Broken

Author: Kaththea Rowland

Publisher: America Star Books

Published: 2003-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781592867257

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Brian Molko, today frontman of Placebo, with a penchant for makeup and little black dresses, struggles in order to forge his way into the limelight. With a past filled with near-death experiences, incomprehensions, violent bullying, and rebellions, he moves to London in order to escape the noir oppression that Luxembourg offered. On his journey to fame he encounters obsessive lovers, drag queens, long-lost idols, and sinister stalkers. But an unexpected twist of fate alters it all. His experiences enthrall, intrigue, and at times frighten the reader, as his ambiguous and occasionally heart-breaking realm unravels, depicting how he unveils his naked ambition and fierce wit in order to succeed. This collection of anecdotes chronicles Brian's jittery journey from a hated childhood to the thriving rock scene, where he becomes the undisputed star of the upcoming century.

Placebo
Placebo

Author: Dylan Evans

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780195220544

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Can we really cure ourselves of disease by the power of thought alone? Faith healers and alternative therapists are convinced that we can, but what does science say? Contrary to public perception, orthodox medical opinion is remarkably confident about the healing powers of the mind. For the past fifty years, doctors have been taught that placebos such as sugar pills and water injections can relieve virtually any kind of medical condition. Yet placebos only work if you believe they work, so the medical confidence in the power of the placebo effect has provided scientific legitimacy to popular claims about the healing power of the mind. In this intriguing exploration, Dylan Evans exposes the flaws in the scientific research into the placebo effect and reveals the limits of what can and cannot be cured by thought alone. Drawing on new ideas in immunology and evolutionary biology, Evans proposes a new theory about how placebos work, and asks some searching questions about our concepts of health and disease

The Placebo Effect
The Placebo Effect

Author: David Rotenberg

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1476746915

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this first action-packed novel in The Junction Chronicles, professor and acting coach Decker Roberts has the dangerous gift of detecting the truth—that turns into deadly curse. For years Decker’s rare sensory ability to discern the truth proved to be a lucrative sideline to his acting teaching. Only his closest friends know, and he keeps his "synesthete" identity secret from the companies that pay him to tell them if the people they are planning to hire are truthful. But Decker’s carefully compartmentalized life starts to fall apart. His house burns down, his credit cards are cancelled, his bank loan is called and his studio is condemned. He realizes that he must have heard something in one of his truth-telling sessions that someone didn’t want him to know. Decker has to go on the run and figure out why he’s been targeted. There’s also a government agent hunting him who seems to know absolutely everything about Decker Roberts’ identities, real and false—and other people of “his kind.” How will Decker find out which truth was endangering his life? Who betrayed him and revealed all his secrets? Decker needs to find answers quickly, before knowing the truth turns from a gift into a deadly curse.

The Pain Chronicles
The Pain Chronicles

Author: Melanie Thernstrom

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2010-08-17

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1429979453

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas that prevent proper treatment, to devastating effect. In The Pain Chronicles, a singular and deeply humane work, Melanie Thernstrom traces conceptions of pain throughout the ages—from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to modern brain imaging—to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself. Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading-edge pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines—science, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and art—Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear. Both a personal meditation and an intellectual exploration, The Pain Chronicles illuminates and makes sense of the all-too-human experience of pain—and confronts with extraordinary grace and empathy its peculiar traits, its harrowing effects, and its various antidotes.

Suggestible You
Suggestible You

Author: Erik Vance

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1426217897

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

National Geographic's riveting narrative explores the world of placebos, hypnosis, false memories, and neurology to reveal the groundbreaking science of our suggestible minds. Could the secrets to personal health lie within our own brains? Journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising ways our expectations and beliefs influence our bodily responses to pain, disease, and everyday events. Drawing on centuries of research and interviews with leading experts in the field, Vance takes us on a fascinating adventure from Harvard's research labs to a witch doctor's office in Catemaco, Mexico, to an alternative medicine school near Beijing (often called "China's Hogwarts"). Vance's firsthand dispatches will change the way you think--and feel. Expectations, beliefs, and self-deception can actively change our bodies and minds. Vance builds a case for our "internal pharmacy"--the very real chemical reactions our brains produce when we think we are experiencing pain or healing, actual or perceived. Supporting this idea is centuries of placebo research in a range of forms, from sugar pills to shock waves; studies of alternative medicine techniques heralded and condemned in different parts of the world (think crystals and chakras); and most recently, major advances in brain mapping technology. Thanks to this technology, we're learning how we might leverage our suggestibility (or lack thereof) for personalized medicine, and Vance brings us to the front lines of such study.

The Official Guide to Starting Your Own Direct Primary Care Practice
The Official Guide to Starting Your Own Direct Primary Care Practice

Author: Debra Farrago M. Ed

Publisher:

Published: 2016-04-30

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780692681374

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Douglas Farrago MD uses the insights he has learned from twenty years of being a family physician, his vast connection to DPC docs from around the country and his own odyssey into Direct Primary Care that he used to create an incredibly successful practice in the central Virginia area. He teaches you the secrets you need to know to fill your practice as well as laying the groundwork into making your office great so patients are clamoring to get in.

Fanny Says
Fanny Says

Author: Nickole Brown

Publisher: BOA Editions

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781938160578

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A raucous, bawdy, and hilarious investigation of the South through the unforgettable voice of Fanny, Nickole Brown's fierce, tough-as-new-rope grandmother.

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

Author: Anne Harrington

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1324001976

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Superb… a nuanced account of biological psychiatry.” —Richard J. McNally In Mind Fixers, “the preeminent historian of neuroscience” (Science magazine) Anne Harrington explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated efforts to understand mental disorder. She shows that psychiatry’s waxing and waning theories have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors. Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future.