This is a study of the work and life of district midwives from 1948 to 1972 in Nottingham, which was one of the last UK cities to build a central maternity unit. The author statistically examines the outcome of home births in the area, taking into account the Parliamentary Reports of 1992 and 1993 and demonstrating the safety and value to society of district midwives.

The midwife: medical professional, friend in a woman's hour of greatest need, potent social and cultural symbol. Though the role of midwife has existed since time immemorial, it is only since the Victorian era that it has been a recognised and regulated profession. This book, from social history expert Susan Cohen, looks at midwifery in Britain from ancient times up to the present, paying particular attention to its incredible medical and social advances of the last 150 years. It is a fully illustrated tour that takes in fictional midwives such as Dickens' Sarey Gamp, the founding of the Royal College of Midwives in 1881, the Second World War, the forming of the NHS and the Central Midwives Board, and looks at the increasing medicalisation of childbirth and the countervailing trend for giving birth at home.

The debt medicine owes to botany is not commonly appreciated. In the past, medicine relied almost entirely on plants, and even today, many western medicines are plant derived. Despite this, historians have largely neglected the study of domestic medicine, practised by the ordinary person and passed down through generations, in favour of 'official medicine'. The History of Domestic Plant Medicine brings together manuscripts, letters, diaries, personal oral interviews and other primary evidence to produce a detailed picture of the medicinal use of native plants in Britain from 1700 to the present day. Recording for posterity this neglected aspect of our heritage, it is a valuable contribution to the study of the folklore of modern Britain and a fascinating piece of social history.

An unflinching examination of the moral and professional dilemmas faced by physicians who took part in the Manhattan Project. After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained a treasure trove of information about his grandfather's role as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure. A talented ob-gyn radiologist, he cared for the scientists on the project, organized safety and evacuation plans for the Trinity test at Alamogordo, escorted the "Little Boy" bomb from Los Alamos to the Pacific Islands, and was one of the first Americans to enter the irradiated ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Participation on the project challenged Dr. Nolan's instincts as a healer. He and his medical colleagues were often conflicted, torn between their duty and desire to win the war and their oaths to protect life. Atomic Doctors follows these physicians as they sought to maximize the health and safety of those exposed to nuclear radiation, all the while serving leaders determined to minimize delays and maintain secrecy. Called upon both to guard against the harmful effects of radiation and to downplay its hazards, doctors struggled with the ethics of ending the deadliest of all wars using the most lethal of all weapons. Their work became a very human drama of ideals, co-optation, and complicity. A vital and vivid account of a largely unknown chapter in atomic history, Atomic Doctors is a profound meditation on the moral dilemmas that ordinary people face in extraordinary times.

Originally published between 1968 and 1989, the volumes in this set: Present a coherent body of information on the inter-relation between nutrition, health and disease in its social context. Examine various aspects of disease ecology relating socio-geographical contrasts to a dichotomy between infectious and non-infectious diseases. Investigate certain large-scale demographic phenomena in India - among others the experience of bubonic plague, influenza, cholera and famine. Discuss how social and psychological factors influence the treatment process. Explain why so many people suffer behavioural changes in later life; how this affects those around them and the challenges of providing health services for ageing populations. Provide historical perspective on contemporary difficulties and invite debate about the future development of health services. Offer international comparisons, particularly between the UK and US health care systems. Explore how the NHS confronts perennial stresses and problems, in particular the allocation of scarce resources. Investigate policy and legislation in the area of the provision of medicines. Chart the dramatic changes in the US mental health system during the 20th Century.

'Indecently entertaining.' A Daily Mail Book of the Week An Amazon US Best Book of 2022 'A fascinating tale of poisons and poisonous deeds which both educates and entertains.' - Kathy Reichs As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring - and popular - weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict? In a fascinating blend of popular science, medical history, and narrative crime nonfiction, Dr Neil Bradbury explores this most morbidly captivating method of murder from a cellular level. Alongside real-life accounts of murderers and their crimes -some notorious, some forgotten, some still unsolved - are the equally compelling stories of the poisons involved: eleven molecules of death that work their way through the human body and, paradoxically, illuminate the way in which our bodies function. Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the fascinating tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals and political assassins, showing how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin & tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon's bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads readers on a fascinating tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive - or don't.

J Martin Littlejohn was a person who stood literally and figuratively shoulder to shoulder with the founder of osteopathy, A T Still. A proud presbyterian Scot who made his career and reputation in the USA, only to have it questioned and discredited after returning to pursue his osteopathic practice in London, Littlejohn was a controversial character. Undoubtedly a pioneer in establishing osteopathic medicine both in the USA and in the UK, he was also a fraud, using contentious qualifications to promote his academic and scientific credibility. No one has been able to write a comprehensive study of Littlejohn until now. John O'Brien has spent years researching the man. Using the objective eye of a professional historian, he has visited the institutions of Littlejohn's life and career, in Northern Ireland, Chicago, Illinois and Kirksville, Missouri, and the National Osteopathic Archive in London, as well as holding interviews with Littlejohn's family in the UK. He was granted access to previously unseen historic material as well as personal family mementos and photographs. This book will be read by anyone with an interest in the history of osteopathy. It gives a thorough description of the life and work of J Martin Littlejohn, with a broad analysis of how and why he took the major decisions to affect his career, for good or bad. And of course the consequences of those decisions, which had a major influence on the development of osteopathy in the 20th century. Key points: * 30 photographs, some previously unseen * Author access to previously unseen archives * Contributions from Littlejohn's family

A son's journey through his father's dementia. As a cardiologist, Sandeep Jauhar is trained to think logically and dispassionately about medical problems, and primed to offer his patients reassurance and solutions. But when his father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s there are no magic treatments or miracle drugs – only the promise of unstoppable decline. For years Jauhar watches his father undergo a distressing transformation. Once a prominent research geneticist and author, he now repeats questions over and over, forgets what he has eaten for breakfast, makes baffling financial decisions and turns into a liability behind the wheel. Jauhar investigates the science of dementia and what actually happens in the brain as we age and our memory falters, uncovering the history of Alzheimer’s from first discovery to the most cutting-edge research, and whether modern treatments offer any hope in a global crisis. A blend of science, history and memoir, My Father’s Brain is a brutally honest and moving account of how Jauhar and his siblings grappled every day with some of life’s toughest questions.

'Absolutely gripping. Impeccably researched and written with the pace and narrative drive of a thriller, but attentive too to the dignity of the victims.' - Daragh Carville, creator of ITV's The BayThe true story of the shocking 1930s murder case, and the revolutionary investigation that changed forensics forever. Lancaster, 1935. In a jealous rage, Dr Buck Ruxton kills his wife, Isabella, and their children's nanny, Mary, before dismembering the bodies in the bathtub. When walkers discover the remains scattered in a ravine in the Scottish Borders, police are confronted with a gruesome jigsaw puzzle that they must piece together - not only to give the women their names back, but also to catch their killer. Using new research, Jeremy Craddock tells the full story of this landmark case in British criminal history. The Jigsaw Murders brings to life Dr Ruxton, the investigators, the legal figures, and silent witnesses Isabella and Mary, recreating the dramatic scenes that shook the world.

What common condition can be treated with cow dung? How do crushed oystershells ease heartburn? Can eels cure deafness? And how do you stop a stubborn case of the hiccups? If someone was struck down by illness or injury in the late eighteenth century, the chances are that they would have referred to William Buchan's Domestic Medicine - with the result that they might have found themselves drinking a broth made from sheep brain or administering drops of urine in their ears. The book's author, a Scottish physician, published his self-help manual in 1769 specifically for the benefit of people who were unable readily to access or afford medical assistance. Copies could be found in coffee-houses, in apothecary shops and private households, and in 1789 Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers took the sensible precaution of grabbing the copy from HMS Bounty before they fled to Pitcairn Island. Much of Dr Buchan's advice on how to live a healthy life and avoid disease is still sound and relevant today, such as eating a varied and healthy diet, breathing plenty of fresh air, and taking exercise. Many of his prescriptions are amusing when viewed in retrospect, such as his fondness for powdered Spanish fly and genital trusses. Other recommendations - bleeding a woman experiencing a difficult childbirth or administering mercury to treat numerous ailments - were downright dangerous. This edited selection of entries from one of the first medical self-help manuals gives a fascinating insight into popular treatments of the eighteenth century, derived both from folklore and the emerging medical science of the day.

The "delightfully macabre" (The New York Times) true tale of a brilliant and eccentric surgeon...and his quest to transplant the human soul.In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain? Dr. Robert White was a friend to two popes and a founder of the Vatican's Commission on Bioethics. He developed lifesaving neurosurgical techniques still used in hospitals today and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. But like Dr. Jekyll before him, Dr. White had another identity. In his lab, he was waging a battle against the limits of science and against mortality itself--working to perfect a surgery that would allow the soul to live on after the human body had died. This "fascinating" (The Wall Street Journal), "provocative" (The Washington Post) tale follows his decades-long quest into tangled matters of science, Cold War politics, and faith, revealing the complex (and often murky) ethics of experimentation and remarkable innovations that today save patients from certain death. It's a "masterful" (Science) look at our greatest fears and our greatest hopes--and the long, strange journey from science fiction to science fact.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction-a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives-by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself "Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I've read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn't self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read." -Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding-let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues-our successes and our failures-can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

In this book, Daniel P. Todes provides concise introduction to the life and science of the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936). Todes weaves together Pavlov's life, values, context, and science by focusing upon his quest to understand the psyche and the "torments of our consciousness". This introduction follows the origins and maturation of Pavlov's quest from his early life in a priestly family in provincial Riazan, to his struggles and late professional success in the glittering capital of St. Petersburg, through the cataclysmic destruction of his world during the Bolshevik seizure of power and civil war of 1917-1921, to the rebuilding of his life in his 70s as a "prosperous dissident" during the Leninist 1920s, and his success and personal torments in 1929-1936 during the industrialization, cultural revolution, and terror of Stalin times. Beyond a basic biography, Todes devotes particular attention to Pavlov's Nobel Prize-winning research on digestion (1891-1903) and his iconic studies of conditional reflexes and higher nervous activity (1903-1936), as well as his experiments with dogs. Fundamentally reinterpreting Pavlov's famous research on conditional reflexes, Todes shows that Pavlov was not a behaviorist, did not use a bell, and was uninterested in training dogs. The Russian scientist sought to explain not merely external behaviors, but the emotional and intellectual life of animals and humans. Furthermore, this iconic "objectivist" was a profoundly anthropomorphic thinker whose science was suffused with his own experiences and values. Exploring the two unpublished manuscripts upon which Pavlov was working when he died, Todes shows the importance of his little-known experiments on chimps and explores his final thoughts about the relationship of science, Christianity, and Bolshevism.

Quinine: The Jesuits discovered it. The Protestants feared it. The British vied with the Dutch for it, and the Nazis seized it. Because of quinine, medicine, warfare, and exploration were changed forever.

For more than one thousand years, there was no cure for malaria. In 1623, after ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing Urban VII the new pope, he announced that a cure must be found. He encouraged Jesuit priests establishing new missions in Asia and in South America to learn everything they could about how the local people treated the disease, and in 1631, an apothecarist in Peru named Agostino Salumbrino dispatched a new miracle to Rome. The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made from the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree.

From the quest of the Englishmen who smuggled cinchona seeds out of South America to the way in which quinine opened the door to Western imperial adventure in Asia, Africa, and beyond, and to malaria's effects even today, award-winning author Fiammetta Rocco deftly chronicles the story of this historically ravenous disease.

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. The war's new weaponry, from tanks to shrapnel, enabled slaughter on an industrial scale, and given the nature of trench warfare, thousands of soldiers sustained facial injuries. Medical advances meant that more survived their wounds than ever before, yet disfigured soldiers did not receive the hero's welcome they deserved. In The Facemaker, award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the astonishing story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to restoring the faces - and the identities - of a brutalized generation. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction in Sidcup, south-east England. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of doctors, nurses and artists whose task was to recreate what had been torn apart. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits. Meticulously researched and grippingly told, The Facemaker places Gillies's ingenious surgical innovations alongside the poignant stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine and art can merge, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.

'Compelling' Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times 'A fascinating book' Daily Mail _______________________________________________________________ We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world -- but it's a lot older than you think. As ancient as the pyramids, its history is even more surprising. In Spare Parts, cultural historian Paul Craddock takes us on a fascinating journey and unearths incredible untold stories, from Indian surgeons regrafting lost noses in the sixth century BC, to the seventeenth century architect who helped pioneer blood transfusions, to the French seamstress whose needlework paved the way for kidney transplants in the early 1900s. Expertly weaving together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery has constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal and machine. It shows us that the history -- and future -- of transplant surgery is tied up with questions not only about who we are, but also what we are, and what we might become. _______________________________________________________________ 'By turns delightful and disturbing . . . A thoroughly engrossing read that I couldn't put down' LINDSEY FITZHARRIS, author of The Facemaker and The Butchering Art 'Spare Parts is a fascinating read filled with adventure, delight and surprise' RAHUL JANDIAL, surgeon and author of Life on a Knife's Edge 'This is a joyful romp through a fascinating slice of medical history' WENDY MOORE, author of The Knife Man

• Provides a historical context for the developments in health over several decades prior to the study • Shows how oral history methods have increasingly been used in medical history research and explores the benefits of this approach • Covers many of the themes of the oral history which enabled and encouraged patients to comment on what was important to them in their encounter with health care • Follows the increasing acceptance of women in medicine, demonstrating how women doctors were viewed by patients within the practice compared to changes in the wider society • Presents a ‘history from below’, using voices that are not normally heard in the medical discourse illustrating the importance of the doctor-patient interface

Until the 1970s, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. A 9-1-1 call might bring police or even the local funeral home. But that all changed with Freedom House EMS in Pittsburgh, a group of Black men who became America's first paramedics and set the gold standard for emergency medicine around the world, only to have their story and their legacy erased-until now. In American Sirens, acclaimed journalist and paramedic Kevin Hazzard tells the dramatic story of how a group of young, undereducated Black men forged a new frontier of healthcare. He follows a rich cast of characters that includes John Moon, an orphan who found his calling as a paramedic; Peter Safar, the Nobel Prize-nominated physician who invented CPR and realized his vision for a trained ambulance service; and Nancy Caroline, the idealistic young doctor who turned a scrappy team into an international leader. At every turn, Freedom House battled racism-from the community, the police, and the government. Their job was gruelling, the rules made up as they went along, their mandate nearly impossible-and yet despite the long odds and fierce opposition, they succeeded spectacularly. Never-before revealed in full, this is a rich and troubling hidden history of the Black origins of America's paramedics, a special band of dedicated essential workers, who stand ready to serve day and night on the line between life and death for every one of us.

For a zitty face. Take urine eight days old and heat it over the fire; wash your face with it morning and night. In late medieval England, ordinary people, apothecaries and physicians gathered up practical medical tips for everyday use. While some were sensible herbal cures, many were weird and wonderful. This book selects some of the most revolting or remarkable remedies from medieval manuscripts in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. There are embarrassing ailments and painful procedures, icky ingredients and bizarre beliefs. The would-be doctors seem oblivious to pain, and any animal, vegetable or mineral, let alone bodily fluid, can be ground up, smeared on or inserted for medical benefit. Similar ingredients are used in 'recipes' for how to make yourself invisible, how to make a woman love you, how to stop dogs from barking at you and how to make freckles disappear. Written in the down-to-earth speech of the time, these remedies often blur the distinction between medicine and magic. They also give a humorous insight into the strange ideas, ingenuity and bravery of men and women in the Middle Ages, and a glimpse of the often gruesome history of medicine through time. The remedies have been collected and transcribed from fifteenth-century manuscripts by students at the University of Oxford. Modern English translations, for easier reading, are given alongside the original Middle English.

Key Features: * comprehensive, detailed and consistently structured chapters offer a broad view of General Practice and its development under the NHS * engaging writing style blending a comprehensive narrative, referenced appropriately throughout, interspersed with personal reflections * offers advice and suggestions to healthcare planners worldwide seeking to learn from the UK's unique experience

Bringing together eminent scholars and emerging critics who offer a range of perspectives and critical methods, this collection sets a new standard in Beddoes criticism. In line with the goals of Ashgate's Research Companion series, the editors and contributors provide an overview of Beddoes's criticism and identify significant new directions in Beddoes studies. These include exploring Beddoes's German context, only recently a site of critical attention; reading Beddoes's plays in light of gender theory; and reassessing Beddoes's use of dramatic genre in the context of recent work by theatre historians. Rounding out the volume are essays devoted to key areas in Beddoes's scholarship such as nineteenth-century medical theories, psychoanalytic myth, and Romantic ventriloquism. This collection makes the case for Beddoes's centrality to contemporary debates about nineteenth-century literary culture and its contexts and his influence on Modernist conceptions of literature.

Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. Over centuries, women's bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them. But as doctors, researchers, campaigners and most of all as patients, women have continuously challenged medical orthodoxy. Medicine's history has always been, and is still being, rewritten by women's resistance, strength and incredible courage. In this ground-breaking history Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, illness and pain. From the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece to today's shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the revolutionary story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Drawing on Elinor's own experience as an unwell woman, this is a powerful and timely expose of the medical world and woman's place within it.

THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR ALL BIBLIOMANES A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR A WATERSTONES BEST POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK 2022 AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 WOMAN'S HOUR AND START THE WEEK Plunge into this rich, surprising and stunningly designed A-Z compendium to discover how our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the threads between the past and present, the psychological and social, the personal and the political. 'Fascinating ... Phobias and manias create a magical space between us and the world' Malcolm Gaskill, author of the No. 1 bestseller The Ruin of All Witches 'Fascinating' Observer 'An endlessly intriguing book ... All the bibliomanes (book nutters) I know will love it' Daily Mail 'A new book from Summerscale is always a treat ... Her sub-title might echo Neil MacGregor, but this reads more like a book by Oliver Sacks, with dashes of Roald Dahl' Spectator