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Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
Stephen R. Bown · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorBlood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine
Roy Porter · 224 pages
Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both fr
The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
Sonia Shah · 307 pages
Traces the centuries-long battle to treat and prevent malaria in numerous regions of the world while revealing how hundreds of millions of people are infected annually in spite of available preventions.
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Steven Johnson · 299 pages
A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner with a real-life historical hero that
The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
Thomas Hager · 340 pages
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. It was sulfa, the first synthetic antibiotic. Science writer Hager chronicles the history of the drug that shaped modern medicine. Sulfa saved millions of lives--among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.--but even more, it
Polio: An American Story
David M. Oshinsky · 342 pages
[This book] tells the ... story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond.-Dust jacket.
Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science
John Fleischman · 96 pages
Phineas Gage was truly a man with a hole in his head. Phineas, a railroad construction foreman, was blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848 when a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain. Miraculously, he survived to live another eleven years and become a textbook case in brain science. At the time, Phineas Gage seemed to completely recover from his accident. He could walk, ta
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Deborah Blum · 327 pages
The untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. A pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy · 288 pages
Charts the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies, documenting how before its vaccine the disease caused fatal brain infections and sparked the creations of monsters, including werewolves, vampires and zombies.
Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong
Paul A. Offit · 287 pages
What happens when ideas presented as science lead us in the wrong direction? History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores some of these missteps: from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the U.S.; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart d
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee · 571 pages
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a book written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist. Published on 16 November 2010 by Scribner, it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery
Sam Kean · 432 pages
The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases
E.J. Wagner · 250 pages
From autopsies to zoology, how Holmes eliminated the impossible This unique book uses the legendary adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a jumping-off point to discuss the growth of forensic science during the Victorian era. The book explores the emergence of science from superstition, how forensic autopsies evolved from anatomical dissection, the huge advances in blood chemistry and poison detectio
Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved
Russell Martin · 288 pages
Ludwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer. In those days, it was customary to snip a lock of hair as a keepsake, and this Hiller did a day after Beethoven's death. By the time he was buried, Beethoven's head had been nearly shorn by the many people who similarly had wanted a lasting memento of the great man. Such
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Dava Sobel · 192 pages
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem." Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailo
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages
Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Bloomsbury Sigma)
Kathryn Harkup · 305 pages
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist
William R. Maples · 292 pages
William Maples is blessed with an eerie but powerful gift. From a skeleton, a skull, a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, he can deduce the age, gender and ethnicity of a corpse, and the manner in which the victim was dispatched; his gift has sealed the doom of many a killer. His skill is to read the tales of death written on the bones of the dead, and in this fascinating book he revisits his stran
Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled All of France
Mara Rockliff · 48 pages
Discover how Benjamin Franklin s scientific method challenged a certain Dr. Mesmer s mysterious powers in a whimsical look at a true moment in history. Paris had been enamored by Dr. Franz Mesmer's ability to cure ailments by staring into a person's eyes and waving a wand. However, when scientist and politician Ben Franklin came to Paris, he used the scientific method to demonstrate what was happ
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach · 304 pages
A hilarious and witty look into the history of using cadavers for science, grave diggers, and options to consider about your burial plan. A dark and uncomfortable subject made more palatable and downright funny.
Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
David J. Nutt · 384 pages
Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History
Penny Le Couteur, Jay Burreson · 384 pages
Napoleon's Buttons is the fascinating account of seventeen groups of molecules that have greatly influenced the course of history. These molecules provided the impetus for early exploration, and made possible the voyages of discovery that ensued. The molecules resulted in grand feats of engineering and spurred advances in medicine and law; they determined what we now eat, drink, and wear. A change
How I Broke Up with My Colon: Fascinating, Bizarre, and True Health Stories
Nick Seluk · 192 pages