Christopher Wanjek
"Bad Medicine: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Distance Healing to Vitamin O"
W...ey | 2003 | ISBN: 047143499X | 288 pages |

"Christopher Wanjek uses a take-no-prisoners approach in debunking the outrageous nonsense being heaped on a gullible public in the name of science and medicine. Wanjek writes with clarity, humor, and humanity, and simultaneously informs and entertains."
-Dr. Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic magazine; monthly columnist,
Scientific American; author of Why People Believe Weird Things

Prehistoric humans believed cedar ashes and incantations could cure a head injury. Ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the center of thought, the liver produced blood, and the brain cooled the body. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates was a big fan of bloodletting. Today, we are still plagued by countless medical myths and misconceptions. Bad Medicine sets the record straight by debunking widely held yet incorrect notions of how the body works, from cold cures to vaccination fears.

Clear, accessible, and highly entertaining, Bad Medicine dispels such medical convictions as:
* You only use 10% of your brain: CAT, PET, and MRI scans all prove that there are no inactive regions of the brain . . . not even during sleep.
* Sitting too close to the TV causes nearsightedness: Your mother was wrong. Most likely, an already nearsighted child sits close to see better.
* Eating junk food will make your face break out: Acne is caused by dead skin cells, hormones, and bacteria, not from a pizza with everything on it.
* If you don't dress warmly, you'll catch a cold: Cold viruses are the true and only cause of colds.


Protect yourself and the ones you love from bad medicine-the brain you save may be your own.

Gary Presley

"Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio"
University Of Iowa Press | 2008-10-01 | ISBN: 1587296934 | 238 pages

In 1959, seventeen-year-old Gary Presley was standing in line, wearing his favorite cowboy boots and waiting for his final inoculation of Salk vaccine. Seven days later, a bad headache caused him to skip basketball practice, tell his dad that he was too ill to feed the calves, and walk fr om barn to bed with shaky, dizzying steps. He never walked again. By the next day, burning with the fever of polio, he was fastened into the claustrophobic cocoon of the iron lung that would be his home for the next three months. Set among the hardscrabble world of the Missouri Ozarks, sizzling with sarcasm and acerbic wit, his memoir tells the story of his journey fr om the iron lung to life in a wheelchair. Presley is no wheelchair hero, no inspiring figure preaching patience and gratitude. An army brat turned farm kid, newly arrived in a conservative rural community, he was immobilized before he could take the next step toward adulthood. Prevented, literally, from taking that next step, he became cranky and crabby, anxious and alienated, a rolling responsibility crippled not just by polio but by anger and depression, “a crip all over, starting with the brain.” Slowly, however, despite the lim itations of navigating in a world before the Americans with Disabilities Act, he builds an independent life. Now, almost fifty years later, having worn out wheelchair after wheelchair, survived post-polio syndrome, and married the woman of his dreams, Gary has redefined himself as Gimp, more ready to act out than to speak up, ironic, perceptive, still cranky and intolerant but more accepting, more able to find joy in his family and his newfound religion. Despite the fact that he detests pity, can spot condescension from miles away, and refuses to play the role of noble victim, he writes in a way that elicits sympathy and understanding and laughter. By giving his readers the unromantic truth about life in a wheelchair, he escapes stereotypes about people with disabilities and moves toward a place wh ere every individual is irreplaceable.

50 Timeless Scientists
Publisher: Pustak Mahal | ISBN: 8122310303 | edition 2008 | PDF | 191 pages | 10.7 MB

Here we have scientists who missed Nobel Prize and those whom Nobel missed. A Nobel Prize awarded to Pauling was branded as an insult! But he is the only one to receive two unshared Nobels. Bardeen promised Swedish king that he would return and he did for another Nobel. An agricultural Scientist received a Peace Nobel Prize. Yes! What is peace without food? Barbara Mcclintock refused to publish her papers anguished at the hostile scientific community, but Nobel committee discovered her in 1983.
Then we have scientists who received awards in prison cells, scientists who made discoveries in the prison cells. Tesla was thrown out of his own labs, cheated by another great man but his alternating current runs our homes now. Carlson went fr om pillar to post with his photocopy machine and sooner or later we may have a Xerox of human being. Townes received the revelation for LASER on a park bench. When Maiman made the practical Laser, a Hollywood actress wondered if it is a death Ray.
Medicines from Jenner, Pasteur and the like consigned some diseases to history. If only Subba Rao lived a few years more, he would have killed some more diseases. A trio of scientists transformed the twentieth century by inventing the transistor. To top it all, a scientist who was not allowed to go on a holiday invented the microchip.
A school teacher testified in the court to save his old student, Fansworth from greedy corporations for his rightful invention, the television. Davy openly accepted his student as his greatest discovery, Michael Faraday indeed!
New York Times reversed its ridicule ladled out on a rocket scientist after 40 years only after man landed on the moon. Pauli discovered Neutrinos but could not believe their existence. When proved, he kept his promise of champagne casket.
You have them all! It is not a weary chronology of oft repeated Einstein or Newton but a delightful journey into the biographies some of the unsung heroes through their trials and tribulations, eurekas and euphorias, their pleasures and pains, and their dreams and delusions.
01. Amar Bose (Bose Systems) 9
02. Aryabhatta (Mathematician and Astronomer) 13
03. Barbara Mc Clintock (Genius Genetist) 16
04. Benjamin Peary Paul (Father of Roses) 20
05. Bhaskaracharya (Mathematician and Astrologer) 23
06. C. N. R. Rao (Material Chemist) 27
07. C. R. Rao (Rao Theorems) 31
08. Charles Goodyear (Vulcanisation) 34
09. Charles H. Townes (Laser) 38
10. Charles Kettering (Automobile Inventions) 41
11. Chestor Carlson (Photocopy Machine) 44
12. E. C. G. Sudarshan (Tachyons) 48
13. Edward Jenner (Vaccination) 52
14. Felix Hoffman (Aspirin and Heroin) 55
15. Howard Florey (Production of Penicillin) 58
16. Humphrey Davy (Davy Lamp) 62
17. J. B. S. Haldane (Haldane's Principle) 65
18. Jack Kilby (Integrated Circuit) 69
19. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (Astrophysicist) 73
20. John Bardeen (Transistor) 76
21. Jonas Salk (Polio vaccine) 80
22. Linus Pauling (Chemical Bond) 84
23. Louis Jean Pasteur (Pasteurisation) 88
24. M. S. Swaminathan (Father of Green Revolution) 92
25. Meghnad Saha (Saha Equation) 97
26. Niels Bohr (Bohr's Model) 100
27. Nikola Tesla (Alternating Current) 104
28. Norman Borlaug (Agricultural Scientist) 108
29. P. C. Mahalanobis (Mahalanobis Distance) 112
30. Philo Farnsworth (Electronic Television) 115
31. Raja Ramanna (Nuclear Physicist) 119
32. Robert H. Goddard (Rocket Pioneer) 123
33. Robert Noyce (Integrated Circuit) 127
34. Ronald Ross (Malaria Cure) 130
35. S. Chandrasekhar (Chandrasekhar Lim it) 134
36. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (Magneto Chemistry) 138
37. Sigmund Freud (Father of Psychoanalysis) 142
38. Sushruta (First Cosmetic Surgeon) 145
39. Albert Szent Gyorgyi (Vitamin C) 149
40. Theodore H. Maiman (Practical Laser) 152
41. Tim Berners-Lee (Internet) 156
42. M.K. Vainu Bappu (Astronomer) 159
43. Varahamihira (Mathematician and Astrologer) 162
44. Vikram Sarabhai (Space Scientist) 165
45. Walter Brattain (Transistor) 169
46. Washington Carver (Agriculture Scientist) 173
47. William Shockley (Transistor) 177
48. Wilson Greatbatch (Implantable Heart Pacemaker) . 181
49. Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (Pauli's Principle) 185
50. Yellapragada Subba Rao (Auromycin and Hetrazan).. 188

Peter McDonald
Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations
Published: 2003-12-18 | ISBN: 0192630474 |  224 pages

The Oxford Book of Medical Quotations presents a wonderfully entertaining and eclectic range of quotations covering all aspects of medicine through the ages. It couples profound statements from famous scientists with witty one-liners from the likes of Woody Allen and Spike Milligan. Packed with hundreds of quotations, it is a book that anyone in the medical profession, or with an interest in health, will find an invaluable source of reference hand considerable entertainment.

White Coat Tales: Medicine's Heroes, Heritage, and Misadventures
Robert B. Taylor
English | Oct 15, 2007 | ISBN: 0387730796 | 272 Pages

This collection of intriguing stories offers profound insights into medical history. It highlights what all health professionals should know about the career path they have chosen. Each chapter presents a number of fascinating tales of legendary medical innovators, diseases that changed history, insightful clinical sayings, famous persons and their illnesses, and epic blunders made by physicians and scientists. The book relates the stories in history to what clinicians do in practice today and is ideal reading for physicians, residents, medical students and all clinicians.

Paul Offit, "Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine"
English | ISBN: 0465082963 | 2015 | 272 pages

In recent years, there have been major outbreaks of whooping cough among children in California, mumps in New York, and measles in Ohio's Amish country--despite the fact that these are all vaccine-preventable diseases. Although America is the most medically advanced place in the world, many people disregard modern medicine in favor of using their faith to fight life threatening illnesses. Christian Scientists pray for healing instead of going to the doctor, Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions, and ultra-Orthodox Jewish mohels spread herpes by using a primitive ritual to clean the wound. Tragically, children suffer and die every year from treatable diseases, and in most states it is legal for parents to deny their children care for religious reasons. In twenty-first century America, how could this be happening? In Bad Faith, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Paul Offit gives readers a never-before-seen look into the minds of those who choose to medically martyr themselves, or their children, in the name of religion. Offit chronicles the stories of these faithful and their children, whose devastating experiences highlight the tangled relationship between religion and medicine in America. Religious or not, this issue reaches everyone--whether you are seeking treatment at a Catholic hospital or trying to keep your kids safe from diseases spread by their unvaccinated peers. Replete with vivid storytelling and complex, compelling characters, Bad Faith makes a strenuous case that denying medicine to children in the name of religion isn't just unwise and immoral, but a rejection of the very best aspects of what belief itself has to offer.