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Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
Andrew T. Still, the founder of osteopathic medicine, reveals how
he matured into a medical pioneer from humble beginnings in the
rural frontier of the United States. Beginning with his upbringing
in rural Missouri, we witness how Still became accustomed to
practicality at a young age. At the time he was a boy in the 1840s,
the area he and his family lived in was barely settled - many basic
public amenities such as hospitals and schools simply did not
exist. Still's father became the local doctor, and would introduce
his son to the medicine. The outbreak of the American Civil War in
the 1860s disrupted the young Still's apprenticeship in medicine
and surgery, although he gained valuable experience treating sick
and wounded soldiers as a hospital steward. During and after the
war, Still was astonished at how ineffectual so many medical
techniques were - this, coupled with researches and a further
course in medicine, spurred him to create the science of
osteopathy.
By addressing the enigma of the exceptional success of Hungarian
emigrant scientists and telling their life stories, Brilliance in
Exile combines scholarly analysis with fascinating portrayals of
uncommon personalities. Istvan and Balazs Hargittai discuss the
conditions that led to five different waves of emigration of
scientists from the early twentieth century to the present.
Although these exodes were driven by a broad variety of personal
motivations, the attraction of an open society with inclusiveness,
tolerance, and - needless to say - better circumstances for working
and living, was the chief force drawing them abroad. While
emigration from East to West is a general phenomenon, this book
explains why and how the emigration of Hungarian scientists is
distinctive. The high number of Nobel Prizes among this group is
only one indicator. Multicultural tolerance, a quickly emerging,
considerably Jewish, urban middle class, and a very effective
secondary school system were positive legacies of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Multiple generations, shaped by these
conditions, suffered from the increasingly exclusionist,
intolerant, antisemitic, and economically stagnating environment,
and chose to go elsewhere. "I would rather have roots than wings,
but if I cannot have roots, I shall use wings," explained Leo
Szilard, one of the fathers of the Atom Bomb.
‘Brave, compassionate and inspiring – it left me in floods of tears’ Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt
For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.
The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal.
Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realize that flying into a catastrophe – whether war or natural disaster – was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets.
War Doctor is his extraordinary story
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