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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorScurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
Stephen R. Bown · 255 pages
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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 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
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
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Randy Shilts · 651 pages
The blueprint of 20th century investigative journalism. Tracing the course of HIV/AIDS through society; from its earliest as then unknown incarnation, to the height of this 1980s hysteria – the death of Rock Hudson: Shilts's book should be in every High School's final academic examinations coursework reading list, as a compulsory item. An unregrettable read.
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
John M. Barry · 546 pages
At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collisio
Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
David Oshinsky · 387 pages
A history of the iconic public hospital on New York City's East Side describes the changes in American medicine from 1730 to modern times as it traces the building's origins as an almshouse and pesthouse to its current status as a revered place of first-class care. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled
Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
Gina Kolata · 338 pages
The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Es
Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries
Molly Caldwell Crosby · 291 pages
Crosby, acclaimed author of "The American Plague," explores the frightening history of a long forgotten disease--sleeping sickness--and details the frantic effort to conquer it before it strikes again.
Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat
Gail Jarrow · 192 pages
One hundred years ago, a mysterious disease called pellagra spread across the American South - "one of the most horrible, pitiful afflictions mankind has ever suffered." No one knew what caused it or how to treat it. Millions of men, women, and children were left weak, disfigured, insane, and, in some cases, dead. Many were also left to worry -- would they be pellagra's next victims? Author Gail J
An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine
Howard Markel · 325 pages
The astonishing account of the decades-long cocaine use of Sigmund Freud and William Halsted. The author discusses the physical and emotional damage caused by the constant use of the then-heralded wonder drug, and of how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it--or because of it.
Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution
Holly Tucker · 304 pages
A sharp-eyed expose of the deadly politics, murderous plots, and cutthroat rivalries behind the first blood transfusions in seventeenth-century Europe.
Blood and Guts A History of Surgery by Hollingham, Richard
Richard Hollingham · 320 pages
'Blood and Guts' tells the remarkable history of surgery from ancient times onwards. It's an extraordinary story of stolen corpses, medical fraud, lobotomised patients - and every now and then courageous advances that have saved the lives of millions around the world.
A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities
Jan Bondeson · 250 pages
Before museums there were cabinets of medical curiosities: a dried mermaid might sit next to a giant's shinbone; the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In this well-illustrated book, the author uses his medical expertise to explore some of these medical freaks, outright frauds and popular myths. He debunks some as mere superstition and offers medical diagnoses for other cases.