Book Description
In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."
Customer Reviews:
One Of The Greatest Clinical Writers Of The Twentieth Century.......2007-10-10
"ONE OF THE GREATEST CLINICAL WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY."
---New York Times
"From world-famous neurolotist Dr. Oliver Sacks comes a bestselling collection of fascinating clinical tales representing an intriguing and touching investigation into the complexities of the human mind.
Dr. Sacks draws listeners into the strage and fascinating world of his neurologically impaired patients with humor and compassion:
here are individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations;
patients who have lost their memory and with it the greater part of their past;
who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects, although they can see perfectly;
who are possessed by violent tics and grimaces or who involuntarily shout obscenities;
whose own limbs have become alien;
who have been dismissed as retarded,
yet are gifted with unexpected strengths and talents.
At once inconceivably strange and deeply human,
these tales are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity,
and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired,
to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do."
"Oliver Sacks is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine."
"The book
THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT
is published by Harper Petennial
Contents: 2 audio cassettes in standard plastic cases inside the paper case.
Running time: Approximately 3 hours.
Abridged with music.
Performance and copyright 1990 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
ISBN 1 55994 368 8."
[from the back of case]
A mind is a wonderful thing to explore.......2007-08-13
I bought this book for only one of its chapters as research for a screenplay, but ended up reading the whole thing. It is fascinating and will give you an appreciation for your own (hopefully functioning) brain. Each story is complete in itself, so it would make for good commuting or bedtime reading.
The Man Who Wrote this book mistook his patients for hats.......2007-07-15
Dr. Sacks' collection of clinical tales is obviously outdated, however this is not its greatest flaw. All of these stories are indeed remarkable, and they speak to the mysterious nature of the human mind and of course to human resilience. It is incredibly fascinating to think how one's individual nature and function can change in response to a neurological change. Dr. Sacks attempts to introduce and involve the reader in his patients' lives, but unfortunately fails to do so. The reader only establishes a superficial connection with the "client," as Dr. Sacks treats his patients as if they were just scientific specimens. In particular, I had a problem with his language and judgment. In "The World of the Simple," he talks about a mentally retarded girl Rebecca..."one sees this with infants, one sees it with the senile, most poignantly, with the Rebeccas of this world" (186). Rebeccas of this world? I was under the impression that he wrote this book to present the individuality and uniqueness of his patients? He simply calls her "mentally defective" (185). In talking about his Autist Artist, Dr. Sacks concludes that Jose will just "do nothing, and spend a useless, fruitless life, as so many other autistic people do, overlooked, unconsidered, in the back ward of a state hospital." I completely agree that people suffering from autism should be given a chance in the workplace, to be offered opportunities to live a real life. However, I do not agree that it is up to Dr. Sacks to decide and declare Jose's life fruitless if he does not work lives up to his social value. Aside from Dr. Sacks' extremely pretentious tone, he does attempt to explore the inner life and conflict of his patients in an interesting way.
Fascinating.......2007-04-18
Each mind described in this book is completely enthralling. You're left wanting to hear more - wondering how Dr. Sacks could hold back from experiments and asking question after question. On the contrary, Dr. Sacks treats all these patients with a high degree of respect and patience. I'm still pondering some of the questions raised in the book - interesting enough, the one that I most remember is the question about our soul...
DON'T MISS IT!.......2007-03-18
One of the most stolen books in our high school library and a very good read for all ages,this is but one of several eclectic books by Oliver Sacks,part of whose work was the subject of the movie Awakenings.
Book Description
"I'm a hyper-chondriac. My prescription? Whatever you've got. And quickly, please. I'm in a hurry."
With these words, Brian Frazer strikes the keynote for his quixotic quest for total wellness -- a seemingly paradoxical goal for a young man who doesn't smoke, rarely drinks and never misses an opportunity to floss.
Chronicling his relentless search for inner peace, Frazer takes readers on a hilarious guided tour of his dysfunctional childhood, marked by an extraordinary ability to contract a new disease almost every month, a disturbing obsession with bodybuilding and a veritable sampler platter of disorders of every imaginable type. Snake oils, old wives' tales and oddball remedies dispensed by charlatans quickly become mother's milk to him. While other children are playing Little League, Brian visits his first hypnotist.
As an adult, Frazer proves even more high maintenance. His forays into analysis, Kabbalah, yoga, anger management, psycho-pharmacology and puppy rearing are all attempts to achieve some sort of lasting happiness and inner peace. He discovers that almost everything works. For about five minutes.
Achingly funny, uncomfortably true and always entertaining, Hyper-chondriac abounds with an antic energy one would not expect from so sick an individual.
Customer Reviews:
Very funny, surprisingly touching.......2007-10-16
Brian Frazer's Hyperchondriac is outstanding. It's a fun, hilarious read that surprisingly turns out to be as touching as it is funny. At the beginning of the book, Frazer is a walking ball of tension, waiting for the next perceived slight to make him blow his stack. When he realizes that his approach to life is having a very real impact on his health, as likely to send him to a doctor as it is into a rage, he goes on a quest to find inner-peace and calm down. But while Frazer's fish-out-of-water experiences with new age religion, bizarre diets and internet snake oil (all with varying degrees of success) are hilarious, it's his willingness to dig into an uncomfortable past and come to terms with the source of his problems that elevates this book to another level. It's a great read for both those looking for happiness and those who can't stop themselves from giving the guy in the next car the finger.
Frustrations we all relate to made highly entertaining.......2007-09-28
Brian Frazer has a way with words! He speaks from the heart with words & phrases that most people today would think or say themselves in these situations. I myself have tried nearly all the natural methods of healing he describes, and felt his frustration with the positive & negative aspects of each. It was also very easy to relate to his road rage, waiting in line irriation, & assuming the worst about neighbors I've only seen through the windshield. I laughed hysterically at many of his stories & found myself reading aloud to my teenage son & husband. Loved this book! Just enjoying this book was an integral part in my own quest to slow down. Thank you Brian!
Brilliant.......2007-09-25
This book takes anxiety, stress and dysfunction, and makes them funny! Part cautionary tale, and part life lesson. Loved it!
Freakin' funny!.......2007-09-11
Pity the poor souls who are on the receiving end of Mr. Frazer's tirades. For the rest of us, a good (and dare I say it) a side-splitting time is to be found within this book. With brutal honesty, he manages to capture his crazy life in a most entertaining manner. It's good that the author found a way to make money from his neuroses because I can't see him as a barrista at Starbucks. I can only imagine a customer telling Brian that he screwed up his order and Frazer, after a few choice, yet eloquent, words, throws the double grande espresso in the customer's face. Actually, I think that could make for a funny reality show: Frazer doing menial jobs with lots of public interaction.
Smart! Funny! Thoughtful! Validating!.......2007-09-10
Great read! I loved this book, it was smart, funny, thoughtful and validating. It is a relief to read a truly funny book about coping with the stresses of life. No quick fixes here, and that is why I find it validating! With "the secret" out there trying to tell us that by simply by doing an affirmation or two, we will get every "thing" we want immediately, and drug companies trying to convince us that all you need is do is take a pill, this is a book that shows that true growth and self awareness takes time and effort. Honestly I think our present culture needs to hear this message more! But, most important with Brian Frazer's irreverent wit, he is an amazing role model, showing us that figuring it all out can be a fun adventure if you choose it to be. Again, I just LOVED this book!
Average customer rating:
- Important theme, but not helpful
- Excellent explanation
- Yes, it has some hyperbole and a pop psychology feel but it is still thought-provoking
- "I'm very close to my mother."
- Female Reader
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Mothers, Sons, and Lovers: How a Man's Relationship with His Mother Affects the Rest of His Life
Michael Gurian
Manufacturer: Shambhala
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Similar Items:
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Absent Fathers, Lost Sons: The Search for Masculine Identity
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The Good Son: Shaping the Moral Development of Our Boys and Young Men
-
What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works
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What Stories Does my son need?: A Guide to Books and Movies that Build Character in Boys
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A Fine Young Man: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Men
ASIN: 0877739455
Release Date: 1993-11-23 |
Book Description
Through exercises and guided meditations, the author provides the means to uncover the influence of the primal bond between a man and his mother and to facilitate healing thereâas well as in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and all other relationships of love.
Customer Reviews:
Important theme, but not helpful.......2007-06-19
If you like nice theories, this is a great book. If you are objective and want to solve problems and apply knowledge, forget it. This is one more book about initiation, mythology, the goddess, quests, the sacred and so on. Good for academics.
Excellent explanation.......2006-08-30
This book does an excellent explanation of exactly how I felt toward my mother, and helped me to start to release my victimized perception of myself regarding her. The philosophies about hurting nature as a result of my mom seemed quite out of place, everywhere they were mentioned, but nearly everything else was well placed.
Yes, it has some hyperbole and a pop psychology feel but it is still thought-provoking.......2006-03-25
Having just used the "Search Inside the Book" feature on Amazon to look at parts of another of Gurian's books (about choosing movies and books for boys and teens), I used it again to get a feel for this book. It convinced me to buy it, just as it convinced me NOT to buy that other book.
While browsing through sections of this book (Mothers, Sons, and Lovers...)I was intrigued by many of the points made. I wanted to know more, including how our society short changes boys in all sorts of way, major and minor, resulting in men who may be searching for a stronger sense of what being "male" in our society means.
One of the most crucial relationships is between a boy and his mother, as well as an active, engaged father. What I particularly liked was the emphasis on helping men heal past wounds, on building from the here and now to the future. I didn't find this book to be a "Blame the Mother" type book but more of an exploration of what can go right - and wrong - in families and , most particularly, between mother and son.
The insights I got from this book will affect my future behavior with my sons and I hope that males who are now living on their own but with unresolved issues with their mothers find solace, support and healing from reading this book.
I confess that I found some of the language to be a bit high-flown for my taste but that is just a very personal opinion and it may not bother other readers. Get past that and go for the nuggets of wisdom that are in this book.
I would strongly suggest readers also get a copy of the book and/or DVD Raising Cain because the it addresses some of the concerns the author has raised about how to raise boy in a system that isn't often designed to best meet their needs (in particular, the average public or private school).
"I'm very close to my mother.".......2005-03-06
Would it not seem common sense self preservation to politely run not walk in the other direction from any man who wants you to know this about him right off the bat? Mother-bound men in literature and film from Oedipus to Norman Bates -- and every sentimental serial killer with a picture of his mother on his nightstand in between -- have yet to teach even 21st Century women the hard lessons in steering clear of this terrible spidermother tragedy. Should have long been a classic in popular psychology; recommended.
Female Reader.......2004-11-25
This book was tremendously helpful in helping me to understand how my Man's Mother shaped his life, why he has such difficulty with intimate relationships and what perhaps he can do to help himself. Thank you Paul Gurian! A library must have for any woman who finds herself involved with a Peter Pan, a perfectionist, or a misogynist.
Book Description
Dr. Pfenninger, one of the lead author's on this book, is the recent recepient of the 2005 Teaching Excellence Award from the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and the 2005 Thomas W. Johnson Award for Career Contributions to Family Medicine Education. His book, Primary Care Procedures 2E, is comprehensive, "how-to" resource offers step-by-step strategies for nearly every outpatient procedure that can be performed in an office, hospital or emergency care facility. Designed for everyday practice, the outline format allows speedy reference while the detailed text and clear illustrations guide readers through each procedure. The new edition of this best-selling book features more than 80 new procedures on hot topics relevant to primary care practice.
Customer Reviews:
Good compilation of minor office procedures.......2007-10-18
This book is very helpful for office procedures, especially as a brief review/confirmation before each session. It is not the intetion of the book to make a compete novice to be competet in the procedure without hand-on training. It is also a great resource for the stock piling of the hardware and supplies for particular procedures.
As Good As Everyone Else Says It Is.......2007-08-12
This book is a bargain at the price. Best book on procedures I have seen.
Has informed consent and post-procedure care forms for almost every procedure as well. The one drawback is the paper is very flimsy and likely will eventually tear because you will use this book a LOT. I would have paid more for heavier paper stock.
Buy this book!.......2007-07-07
This is the only reference you will need for doing office-based primary care procedures. I've been using it for years and highly recommend it to all of the family medicine residents I teach in our residency program.
Excellent reference.......2007-06-11
I am a new Physician Assistant, and this book has come in very handy for the minor procedures that I am called upon to do during my weekly clinic. Recommend for any primary health care providers!
Another Damaged Textbook from Amazon.......2007-03-29
I am very disappointed that the book came with significant damage to the cover. The packaging was useless. The box was completely deformed. There was no protection inside the box. The waterproof sac provided no use. I have bought used books that were in better condition. I now only purchase from other sellers from the Amazon website.
Book Description
Revised to reflect changes made in DSM-IV as they pertain to childhood psychiatric disorders, this updated DSM-IV Training Guide for Diagnosis of Childhood Disorders provides specific instructions for optimally using the DSM-IV. This meticulously researched companion guide will provide welcome clarification and definition of the terms and concepts included in the DSM-IV criteria for disorders pertaining specifically to children and adolescents. The volume encompasses both psychopathology specific to infancy, childhood, and adolescence and other psychiatric disorders, such as Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Depression, and Schizophrenia, that are more common as adult disorders by may appear in childhood. While the diagnostic criteria for these are largely the same for children and adults, there are differences that emerge when making differential diagnosis of these disorders for children, as illuminated in the Training Guide. This companion guide focuses on the manifestation of various disorders, differentiation among syndromes, and qualify of characteristics. Numerous and vivid case vignettes clearly illustrate clinical symptoms and demonstrate the application of diagnostic guidelines. The book highlights the multiaxial approach of DSM as a means of assessing the child from a variety of perspectives including exogenous factors influencing development, sources of a particular disorder, and the child's innate limitations and capabilities. Diagnostic criteria and main features of specific disorders are highlighted in numerous tables and figures interspersed throughout the volume. Most importantly, the Guide highlights the "gray areas" of diagnosis with the hope that increased clinical awareness and record keeping will lead to more accurate classification - and ultimately superior treatment - in the future. The DSM-IV Training Guide for Diagnosis of Childhood Disorders will serve clinicians well in the sometimes difficult and subjective quest for the appropriate diagnosis, treatment, and management of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders. It will also serve to promote the kind of dialogue and research that will lead to even greater diagnostic consensus among practitioners and encourage a more reliable and valid diagnostic practice in the future.
Customer Reviews:
came as ordered.......2007-01-11
The book came in a timely manner and arrived in new condition exactly as I ordered it. Very pleased.
Great and efficient.......2002-07-22
This is a complete and conscientious manual for child and adolescent psychiatric diagnoses and protocals. It is adequately detailed and simple to navigate. Editorial comments are are brief and only applied to variations from past criteria or concepts. Spectrum disorders, for example- autistic and bi-polar receive more details. Several changes stand out; a personality diagnosis may be used for an adolescent; the return of the use of adjustment disorder, anti-social personality may only apply to adult functioning, and the continuous ambiguity of ODD. I will add my own frustrations with the academic disorders- they keep changing the name- which means very little to the practitioner. As a training guide it offers a concise and organized sequence that should be highly useful as an adjunt to internship experiences.
Included are lists of evaluations and short, published scales that I found useful and some elaboration on co-morbid conditions.
The authors prefer the Children's Manifest Anxiety and School Age Depression Inventory over more common ones.
Instead of the GAF- they suggest the Children's Global Assesment Scale and that it is AXIS IV. It's a useful and slender volume that has many purposes.
Book Description
By developing the scale that bears his name, Charles Richter not only invented the concept of magnitude as a measure of earthquake size, he turned himself into nothing less than a household word. He remains the only seismologist whose name anyone outside of narrow scientific circles would likely recognize. Yet few understand the Richter scale itself, and even fewer have ever understood the man.
Drawing on the wealth of papers Richter left behind, as well as dozens of interviews with his family and colleagues, Susan Hough takes the reader deep into Richter's complex life story, setting it in the context of his family and interpersonal attachments, his academic career, and the history of seismology.
Among his colleagues Richter was known as intensely private, passionately interested in earthquakes, and iconoclastic. He was an avid nudist, seismologists tell each other with a grin; he dabbled in poetry. He was a publicity hound, some suggest, and more famous than he deserved to be. But even his closest associates were unaware that he struggled to reconcile an intense and abiding need for artistic expression with his scientific interests, or that his apparently strained relationship with his wife was more unconventional but also stronger than they knew. Moreover, they never realized that his well-known foibles might even have been the consequence of a profound neurological disorder.
In this biography, Susan Hough artfully interweaves the stories of Richter's life with the history of earthquake exploration and seismology. In doing so, she illuminates the world of earth science for the lay reader, much as Sylvia Nasar brought the world of mathematics alive in A Beautiful Mind.
Customer Reviews:
A difficult read about a difficult subject.......2007-09-06
In "Richter's Scale" seismologist and author Susan Hough presents the first comprehensive biography of Charles Richter, famous for developing the earthquake scale that bears his name. Hough's scholarship is thorough and well-documented, and it seems she has carefully waded through every scrap of paper Richter ever wrote (and he was a compulsive diarist). Richter was a pivotal figure at a pivotal time in the science of seismology, and no historian of 20th century science can afford to ignore this book.
For the general reader, however, "Richter's Scale" may prove tough going. Like Richter himself, the book suffers from a split personality. In part it's a straightforward biography of Richter, and in part a history of the development of major ideas in seismology (at least those that touched on Richter's career). Hough presents extensive evidence to suggest that Richter suffered from some sort of neurological disorder, possibly Asperger's Syndrome (a mild form of autism), and that his interests swung back and forth from science to poetry with manic instensity. If you're primarily interested in the science, be warned that there is an awful lot of poetry in this book!
On the flip side, the book comes up short on some technical background information. Although the book includes numerous photographs, there are no illustrations of seismograms (the squiggles that record earth movements following an earthquake). Chapter nine in particular attempts to describe the importance of the development of a consistent system for measuring earthquakes without maps, seismograms or even data tables. Unless you already have a basic understanding of earthquake science, this chapter might stop you dead in your tracks.
Most of the science in the book is centered around the seismology lab at Cal Tech where Richter spent his entire scientific career. Hough considers at length (although somewhat circumspectly) the jealousy surrounding Richter and his extensive public name recognition. Although Hough provides personal background information about several of Richter's colleagues (particularly Beno Gutenberg), more general descriptions of their scientific contributions could have provided better context. Beno Gutenberg may not be a household name like Charles Richter, but the core-mantle boundary is called the Gutenberg Discontinuity by seismologists. Hugo Benioff is immortalized by Wadati-Benioff Zones, the descending seismic belts that mark subduction zones, and even make their way into freshman textbooks! These guys were hardly obscure.
Books on the history of science that make a great read are either driven by a central idea (Dava Sobel's "Longitude," or David Lindley's "Uncertainty") or by a strong and colorful personality ("Degrees Kelvin", also by David Lindley). In terms of style, Hough has fallen between these two stools. It's as if Richter's intense and divided personality imposed itself on the book.
You won't regret having "Richter's Scale" on your bookshelf, but you may not read the whole thing.
Stirred, not shaken.......2007-03-19
Charles Richter is virtually the only seismologist that most of us have heard of, but almost all of us know the name. What, however, was it he did, exactly? And even if it was important, why should we care about his personal life?
Well, his personal life was strange, so the idly curious might be titillated by it. The first question, though, is more directly relevant: Until somebody devised a method of quantifying earthquakes, there was no way to approach any estimate of danger.
Buildings (including not just houses and schools but bridges, highways, dams and power plants) could have been designed to be earthquake-safe without Richter. But the cost can be high, so it would be wasteful to overbuild where the hazard is slight. Underbuilding can be catastrophic. The Tangshan earthquake, as recent as 1976, may have killed 750,000 people. The Chinese government has suppressed the real cost. The 2004 Sumatran quake, on the other hand, which killed close to 200,000, was not so much a matter of building design as of monitoring and evacuation warnings.
So Richter's Scale is a fundamental tool by which to manage our lives. He announced it in 1935. Amazingly, according to geologist turned biographer Susan Elizabeth Hough, many people think it is a machine, like a butcher's scale. It is not a thing but a concept to organize a database.
It took an unusual sort of mind to work out the scale, one capable of holding vast amounts of (at the time) diffuse data, while also having the insight to pick out the relevant relationships among the facts and the application to grind out the numbers. The last was no easy task before the digital computer.
Hough speculates, at great length, that the kind of mind needed is the sort of oddly-wired mechanism found in persons born with Asperger's syndrome. This is speculative, but Richter left all his personal papers to his alma mater, California Institute of Technology, so a great more about Richter's personal demons is known than for most famous people.
Much of it is in the form of poetry -- real poems, with rhymes, regular meter and punctuation. Hough finds his poems somewhat lacking in artistry. That's a matter of taste. I would rate his poetry above almost any winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the past generation.
If Richter had Asperger's, and if it helped him to do significant science, it also caused him lifelong misery in his personal relationships. Although he wrote much, what he meant was not transparent. Hough has to make many speculative judgments, which she does with skill. Still, it is kind of creepy to probe that deeply into anybody else's mind -- if that, in fact, is what we're doing.
Hough speculates that Richter wanted it done, otherwise he would not have left such intimate data in a public archive. Along with a collection of science fiction magazines going back to earliest days of "Amazing Stories."
"Richter's Scale" is definitely what we stupidly call an "adult" book, but Richter himself, despite an "adult" lifestyle, was in some ways a Peter Pan of seismology.
Book Description
Working with the image of the Indian shaman as Wild Man, Taussig reveals not the magic of the shaman but that of the politicizing fictions creating the effect of the real.
"This extraordinary book . . . will encourage ever more critical and creative explorations."—Fernando Coronil, [I]American Journal of Sociology[/I]
"Taussig has brought a formidable collection of data from arcane literary, journalistic, and biographical sources to bear on . . . questions of evil, torture, and politically institutionalized hatred and terror. His intent is laudable, and much of the book is brilliant, both in its discovery of how particular people perpetrated evil and others interpreted it."—Stehen G. Bunker, Social Science Quarterly
Customer Reviews:
Difficult, but worth the effort. .......2006-02-24
Michael Taussig takes a stance towards "terrorism" not common in today's world. By trying to trace the roots of this phenomenon, he brings to light many explanations and understandings many of us fail to realize, only because we have not come across them before. I give this book four stars instead of five simply because it is a difficult read, but if you are interested in what we, today, call "terrorism" and are willing to take the time to plunge into this book, then it will certainly be worth your while.
Taussig takes one on a terrifying, gut churning, horrifying.......1999-02-07
trip through the rubber boom of the 1800's in South America. From detailed historical survey to his first hand accounts of life around the Amazon, he never ceases to confront the reader with reality. His study is comprehensive in that he brings attention to all different aspects of the European, Indian and African people who live there. The study helps integrate the anthropological view of society to consider the religious, political, economic and moral as part of the collective consciousness of a community. Powerful book.
Much more than a simple ethnographic investigation..........1998-01-28
Arguably one of the most accomplished anthropologists working today, Michael Taussig provides an intensely individualistic bricolage of literary, historical, and ethnological interpretations of his many years of fieldwork in the Upper Amazon. One of the most detailed and poignant accounts of shamanism in its cultural context - will very soon be regarded as a classic.
Book Description
In recent decades, the prevalence of heart failure has steadily increased and can be considered a 'contemporary cardiovascular epidemic'. Therefore, treatment of heart failure is a primary focus of cardiovascular disease management strategies.Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy provides basic knowledge about congestive heart failure but also covers the evolution of cardiac resynchronization therapy and provides state-of-the-art information and future directions of this therapeutic tool.As CRT is a new therapy which still undergoes rapid advancement, it is imperative to provide updates in key issues. These include technological advances, the unique role of imaging to assess mechanical dyssynchrony, troubleshooting, recent key clinical trials, and the incorporation of monitoring capabilities into CRT or CRT plus defibrillation devices.Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy is an essential addition to your collection.
Book Description
In this quietly revolutionary work of social observation and medical philosophy, Booker Prize-winning writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr train their gaze on an English country doctor and find a universal man--one who has taken it upon himself to recognize his patient's humanity when illness and the fear of death have made them unrecognizable to themselves. In the impoverished rural community in which he works, John Sassall tend the maimed, the dying, and the lonely. He is not only the dispenser of cures but the repository of memories. And as Berger and Mohr follow Sassall about his rounds, they produce a book whose careful detail broadens into a meditation on the value we assign a human life. First published thirty years ago,
A Fortunate Man remains moving and deeply relevant--no other book has offered such a close and passionate investigation of the roles doctors play in their society.
"In contemporary letters John Berger seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience."--Susan Sontag
Customer Reviews:
Don't waste your time........2007-09-18
I am required to read this book for Clinical Skills class, but I just quit reading it when I got to part in the middle when the author talks about how ignorant the villagers are: "There are large sections of the English working and middle class who are INARTICULATE as a result of wholesale cultural deprivation. THEY ARE DEPRIVED OF THE MEANS OF TRANSLATING WHAT THEY KNOW INTO THOUGHTS THEY CAN THINK." WHAT?!?!?!?!?!? I am sure there are lessons to be learned from this book, but between the marginal-quality, occasionally cryptic writing and the scorn the author shows in passages like this, they're lost. Forget selling this book back to the bookstore... I'm taking it straight to the recycling bin. If there are good lessons in the end, I don't have the patience to read all the way through to get to them. And Lord help me if I ever become the kind of doctor this book describes.
A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor.......2007-08-06
Beautiful, thoughtful, thought-provoking writing in a fascinating setting, from a sophisticated, personally philosophical point of view. Collaborative writing w/photography.
The world has changed.......2005-08-24
I fully admired the dedication of a country doctor at times when general practitioners were regared as doctors who fallen off the ladder of sucess. However, today's doctor patient relationship are so different from what was in the good old days. You will be sued after you saved someone; you have to prescribe according to HMO's 'evidence based guidelines' and be prepared to be the scapegoat whenever something goes wrong. Things has changed. I miss the days when being a doctor can be such a pleasant and satisfying experience.
A Rewarding Book.......2005-04-04
John Berger is know around the world as a Renaissance Man, one who can write criticism, plays, novels, short stories, and can even paint the occasional work of art. But I humbly submit that this may be his best work, one that examines the relationship between a country doctor and his community. Sadly the time period of the piece, the 1960s, are gone and the entire institution of the general practitioner, complete with house calls and lollipops for the children. But the questions he asks are searching ones that hinge on the very fundamental human relations that modernity is radically changing.
What is a human life worth? He won't give you any answers, because he trusts you to think about all this for years to come. An exceptional work.
The way health care should be.......2003-01-14
I read this book for the first time as an undergraduate in 1987, now as a graduate student in health care, I'm realizing the wealth of information about how an effective system of care looks like. It's not the HMO approach, it's the approach that keeps one close to the ground in their community.
If you care about people and health care systems, read this book!
Book Description
When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared.
From humble origins, John Hunter rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful, and often fatal, he rejected medieval traditions to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known figures of the era—including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron.
An insatiable student of all life-forms, Hunter was also an expert naturalist. He kept exotic creatures in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals brought back by Captain Cook from Australia. Ultimately his research led him to expound highly controversial views on the age of the earth, as well as equally heretical beliefs on the origins of life more than sixty years before Darwin published his famous theory.
Although a central figure of the Enlightenment, Hunter’s tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant sums for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the “Irish giant.”
In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter’s murky and macabre world—a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.
Customer Reviews:
The Knife Man.......2007-05-13
Fantastic, intriguing, fun to read. Brings a deep respect to our progenitors and how they ever survived those "unapprised " years. It is a great tribute to the great man John Hunter.
fascinating.......2007-02-12
Wendy Moore does an excellent job of bringing John Hunter's life and accomplishments to us in the context in which they occurred. This book is not only a well written biography on a subject deserving of widespread recognition; it also serves as a great historical reference with intersections into minute aspects of the lives of other notables. The horrific conditions under which individuals in the 1700s underwent surgical procedures are elucidated in this work. In a time where there was no standardized process of peer review, the work of this genius was plaigarized by several who attended his anatomy lectures and much of his writing has been lost to us because of the plaigarism of one of his pupils, who eventually burned many of his papers following his death after he had used them as resource material for discoveries he himself claimed to have made. I am glad that this biography has done some justice for a previously obscure figure. That his conclusions about the evolution of species predated Darwin's birth is a testimony to his relentless pursuit of material fact in a climate where disputing biblical accounts of human origins was considered apostate.
Very Good Treatment of a Little Known Subject.......2006-08-22
I generally agree with the other reviewers that this is an outstanding work, made all the more remarkable by the recognition that Hunter has remained so obscure to the general reader over the 200+ years since he lived and worked. Author Moore's writing style is engaging and straightforward, and the book is an easy and enlightening read. But I do have a couple of cavils. First, and even considering our two centuries' remove, there is a discernible remoteness or lack of intimacy in the description of Hunter and his activities, e.g., "he must have thought", "he probably knew", and so forth that is a bit off-putting until the reader is informed near the end of the book that Hunter's spiteful brother-in-law burned most of his papers, including correspondence with prized pupils like Jenner, after Hunter's death, inevitably depriving biographers of enriching details. I believe it would have been helpful if she explained this fact earlier in the work. Second, the book just cries out for illustrations. The sole "portrait" of Hunter is a small, almost cartoonish depiction, and Moore constantly--if inadvertently--teases the reader with references to the superb illustrators who worked for Hunter over the years, but does not include even one of their drawings; very frustrating. With these exceptions, readers who enjoy the work of physician-cum-historian Roy Porter will certainly feel right at home with this very entertaining book.
"He made surgery a science.".......2006-04-24
Wendy Moore's magnificent book, "The Knife Man," is a thoroughly researched account of the life and times of John Hunter, one of the most controversial and fascinating figures of the eighteenth century. Born in 1728 in Scotland, Hunter was the tenth child of humble farming parents. He was an indifferent student who preferred learning through observation and experimentation rather than by reading dusty texts. During his teenage years, John's father and six of his siblings died. This was not surprising during an era when "burials far exceeded baptisms." Matters were not helped by the use of such toxic "remedies" as bloodletting, purging, and blistering to cure the sick. Doctors never washed their hands or sterilized their instruments; if the disease didn't kill the patient, the physician's intervention would probably do the trick.
In 1748, Hunter traveled to London to assist in the anatomy school founded by his brother, William. This revolutionary institution enabled medical students, for the first time in England, to obtain daily hands-on practice in human dissection. This was a financially successful venture for William and it marked the beginning of John Hunter's brilliant career. Until his death in 1793, John worked tirelessly (sleeping, on average, four hours a night) not only as an anatomist, but also as a popular lecturer, surgeon, naturalist, and scientific thinker, whose theories about the origins of life, resuscitation techniques, and surgical practice were nothing short of visionary. One of his main preoccupations was the collection, dissection, and preservation of animals and insects of many different species, which led to the establishment of his own museum of medicine, comparative anatomy, and natural history.
Because of his unorthodox ideas, many of which contradicted accepted religious beliefs and standard medical practice, Hunter garnered his share of enemies along with his many admirers. He was a vivisectionist who experimented on live animals, and although he was never prosecuted for grave robbing, he was certainly guilty of endorsing and exploiting this practice. His colleagues in St. George's Hospital in London also resented Hunter's high-handedness, frank speech, and disregard for convention; they were undoubtedly also jealous of his huge popularity and devoted following among medical students.
In lesser hands, "The Knife Man" could have been a dry account of an individual whose name few people even recognize, but Wendy Moore's accessible and lively prose brings Hunter and his contemporaries to brilliant life. The author captures a time when medicine was, in many ways, still in its infancy, but it was also an era when innovative ideas were beginning to dissipate the cobwebs of the past. Moore's fluid prose reads like thrilling fiction. She takes us along to the graveyard where Resurrection Men, night after night, ruthlessly dig up fresh corpses for dissection. She seats us in the lecture hall as John Hunter enthralls his rapt students with his exhortation to "ask the reason of things" and take nothing for granted. Moore makes us understand Hunter's vision--to teach his acolytes "to subject every common superstition and unproven therapy to scrutiny, to question every step they took."
Among Hunter's estimated one thousand students were future doctors who would become influential figures in nineteenth century teaching hospitals, spreading Hunter's doctrines throughout Europe and the United States. Among his pupils were Edward Jenner, who developed the vaccine against smallpox, and James Parkinson, for whom Parkinson's disease is named. Hunter also served as surgeon extraordinary to King George III, was elected to the Royal Society of Medicine, and treated such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, a young Lord Byron, and Thomas Gainsborough. No more fitting tribute can be given John Hunter than these words of his assistant, William Clift: "He seemed to me to have lived before his time and to have died before he was sufficiently understood." "The Knife Man" is an unforgettable journey that will enthrall anyone who is interested in the history of medicine and the origins of modern surgical practice.
Very Good.......2006-03-05
This is a well written and enlightening biography of the great 18th century British physician-scientist John Hunter. Moore has done a real service by bringing Hunter before the reading public. Known largely to historians of medicine as an important figure in the history of surgery, Moore shows Hunter to be definitely that and much more. Hunter is also a remarkable personal story. An expatriate Scot and son of impoverished parents, largely uninterested in formal education as a youth, Hunter became the outstanding anatomist of his time under the tutelage of his older brother William and by virtue of his great natural talents. Similarly, he had relatively little in the way of formal medical education, though given the primitive state of medical theory and practice in his time, this was arguably an advantage. By the end of his life, he was perhaps the preeminent surgeon in Britain, enjoyed an international reputation as a scientist, and inspired a large number of students to pursue his brand of empirical, more scientifically oriented practice and research. Though Hunter's story is in some respects a lurid one, with the reliance on grave robbers for cadavers and the vicious professional rivalries characterizing some of his career, Moore does very well to show the essential nature of these events without letting them overpower the narrative. The most interesting aspect of the book is actually not Hunter's medical accomplishments, though these were very important, but Moore's description of his other achievements. Moore shows Hunter to be a profoundly important teacher who influenced a whole generation of British and American surgeons and physicians including important individuals like Jenner. Hunter's achievements as a biologist, particularly his work in anatomy, comparative anatomy, and what would become physiology, were substantial. Moore makes the good point that Hunter's achievements may have been unappreciated in part because credit for some of his achievements were attributed to his older brother and after John Hunter's death, appear to have been appropriated by his shameless brother-in-law. Hunter appears also to have been at the center of the British Enlightenment. His friendships included a number of notable British intellectuals like the great naturalist Joseph Banks and he was on good terms with individuals like Gibbon and Adam Smith.
Written in a clear and lively style, this book does an excellent job of describing Hunter's life and major achievements. It also gives a good sense of contemporary medical practice and scientific life. The drawback of this book is that Moore doesn't give much sense of where Hunter fits into contemporary medical, scientific, and intellectual life. Hunter appears to be a major figure of the British Enlightenment, but he is never described as such by Moore. How did Hunter's work compare with developments in the rest of Europe, for example, Paris, where the end of the 18th century would see a revolution in medical education, some of whose features were anticipated by Hunter? How does Hunter, with his skepticism, his continual questioning of authority, and his dedication to experiment, fit into the broad currents of the Enlightenment and specifically within the British Enlightenment? There is an outstanding secondary literature on many of these topics, but Moore does not seem to have used it in her work on Hunter.
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