Join Hloni Bookholane on his journey of becoming a doctor: from student to intern at the world-famous Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town to the best school of public health in the world across the Atlantic, and back home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are highs and lows – learnings and unlearnings – about the personal versus political as he discovers how government policy, socioeconomics and more influence disease and medicine.

Elizabeth Blackwell's autobiographic history of the brave accomplishments of those who made the USA's medical profession accessible to women is illuminating and uplifting. Writing toward the end of the 19th century, Blackwell strikes a dignified and resolute tone throughout this memoir. Prior to Victorian times, women had only a diminished role in the medical profession, which - like most other professional trades at the time - was closed to female participation. Elizabeth Blackwell however was adamant that she could serve as a medic; her persistence led her to become the first woman ever taught in medical school, studying in the USA. Blackwell discusses famous figures in English medicine, such as Florence Nightingale, as well as several more obscure - but nevertheless important and influential - contributors to the progress of women in the medical profession. Towards the end of the book, set in 1858, Elizabeth Blackwell revisits England to behold the hospitals and medical community of that nation.

In spring 1876 a physician named James Madison DeWolf accepted the assignment of contract surgeon for the Seventh Cavalry, becoming one of three surgeons who accompanied Custer's battalion at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Killed in the early stages of the battle, he might easily have become a mere footnote in the many chronicles of this epic campaign - but he left behind an eyewitness account in his diary and correspondence. A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn is the first annotated edition of these rare accounts since 1958, and the most complete treatment to date. While researchers have known of DeWolf's diary for many years, few details have surfaced about the man himself. In A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn, Todd E. Harburn bridges this gap, providing a detailed biography of DeWolf as well as extensive editorial insight into his writings. As one of the most highly educated men who traveled with Custer, the surgeon was well equipped to compose articulate descriptions of the 1876 campaign against the Indians, a fateful journey that began for him at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, and ended on the battlefield in eastern Montana Territory. In letters to his beloved wife, Fannie, and in diary entries - reproduced in this volume exactly as he wrote them - DeWolf describes the terrain, weather conditions, and medical needs that he and his companions encountered along the way. After DeWolf's death, his colleague Dr. Henry Porter, who survived the conflict, retrieved his diary and sent it to DeWolf's widow. Later, the DeWolf family donated it to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Now available in this accessible and fully annotated format, the diary, along with the DeWolf's personal correspondence, serves as a unique primary resource for information about the Little Big Horn campaign and medical practices on the western frontier.