R. Alton Lee
"From Snake Oil to Medicine: Pioneering Public Health (Healing Society: Disease, Medicine, and History)"
Publisher: Praeger | ISBN 10: 0275994678 | 2007 | 248 pages

Without Samuel J. Crumbine and his Kansas Department of Health, diseases festering in water sources, food and the common towel would have caused thousands of deaths in the United States. Crumbine and his associates paved the way to better treatment of tuberculosis. This well-written account leads the reader down a path of crucial medical advancements.Samuel J. Crumbine was a medical educator without peer, who used his department of health to disseminate the latest developments he and others throughout the world were achieving in public health. He found it necessary to propagandize a skeptical and sometimes hostile public to accept the germ theory, the idea that invisible microbes were making them ill and that they should clean up their environment and their food and water sources. He had to convince the public to rely on modern medicine, not snake oil and other miracle cures for a healthy living. R. Alton Lee's historical account might offer insight in today's threat of Bird Flu and other recent medical threats for any reader.

Bottoms Up!: A Pathologist's Essays on Medicine and the Humanities
Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition | November 1, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0809314193 | 360 pages

The reader will note,” Dr. Ober explains, “that psychopathology occupies a prominent place in these essays—melancholia, masochism, hysteria, autoerotic asphyxia, and other dinner table topics.” The book opens with a brisk discussion of flagellation—studded with rare illustrations. Like all of the essays in the book, this is an illuminating chapter, scholarly and good natured at the same time, and one that gives rise to speculation concerning human nature and human history.
Ober provides medical answers to many mysteries. In a discussion of infertility in the Bible, he speculates medically as to why Onan and his older brother Er died during coitus. In the eyes of the doctor, these biblical antiheros may deserve our pity, but not our scorn. He also explains the role of Reuben’s man­drakes in fertilizing the barren Rachel. Equally fascinating is his discussion of the mandrake, a wondrous weed and sire of legend and superstition.

Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure"
Publisher: University of Missouri Press | ISBN: 0826215025 | edition 2003 | 384 pages

The nineteenth century was a critical time in the development of American medicine, with much competition among the different systems of health care, both traditional and alternative. Not surprisingly, Mark Twain was right in the middle of it all. He experimented with many of the alternative care systems that were available in his day-in part because of his frustration with traditional medicine and in part because he hoped to find the "perfect" system that would bring health to his family. Ober demonstrates that many of Twain's observations are still relevant to today's health care issues, including the use of alternative or complementary medicine in dealing with illness, the utility of placebo therapies, and the role of hope in the healing process.
"This is the kind of book that shatters scholarly complacency by forcing us to reconsider old assumptions. Everyone who studies Mark Twain is familiar with his books' scattered references to quack doctors and nostrums and knows that he devoted his last years to seeking health cures for himself and his family. What Dr. K. Patrick Ober's fascinating new book does is lift our understanding of these subjects to unexpected new levels, convincingly demonstrating the centrality of medicine to Twain's life and work. My prognosis is that after you read this book, you'll ask yourself why you ever before thought that you understood Mark Twain."-R. Kent Rasmussen, author of Mark Twain A to Z

Laura Windsor
"Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia"
ABC-CLIO | 2002 | ISBN: 1576073920 | 259 pages

A medieval nun. A Filipina orphan. A sharecropper's daughter from the American South. They had little in common but a dream and the fortitude to realize it. Hildegarde of Bingen, Dr. Honoria Acosta Sison, and former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders are just three of the hundreds of entries in Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia.

From Booklist
Following on the heels of a similar publication, A Biographical Dictionary of Women Healers [RBB O 1 02], comes another encyclopedia documenting the contributions of women in medicine. Biographies of more than 250 women from a broad range of medical areas give evidence of the many contributions women have made in the field. The entries span the centuries in recording the growth and impact of women's accomplishments in this traditionally male-dominated discipline.

There are biographies of St. Fabiola, who lived in the fourth century, as well as contemporary women who made their mark in the past decade. Not all are physicians. Researchers, nurses, midwives, and women active in medically related social issues are also covered. The biographical sketches run from three sentences to three pages. Most include information about the subject's early life followed by a discussion of her contribution to the field of medicine. Most of the subjects are from North America and Western Europe. Four Asian women, many African American women, and a good representation of Native American women are included. In addition to the biographies there are more than 20 entries on related topics, such as Female genital mutilation and Footbinding, as well as for organizations, institutions, and medical terms. References to source material follow each entry, as do cross-references. An extensive bibliography is included.

Most of the women can be found in other sources such as American Women in Science, 1950 to the Present: A Biographical Dictionary (ABC-CLIO, 1998) and the aforementioned A Biographical Dictionary of Women Healers. The latter title contains as many women and also includes useful appendixes that list entrants by occupation (midwives, nurses, etc.) and a time line, but it has no topical entries. Women in Medicine is recommended for public, secondary-school, and college collections that need more coverage in this area.

Medical Careers and Feminist Agendas: American, Scandinavian, and Russian Women Physicians
Language: English | Publisher: Aldine Transaction | ISBN: 0202306674 | 2001 | 216 pages

The increasing proportion of women in the medical profession has been followed keenly both by conservative and feminist observers during the past three decades. Statistics both in Europe and in the United States tend to confirm that women work mainly in niches of the health care system or medical specialties characteried by relatively low earnings or prestige. The segregation of medical work has become increasingly recognied as a sign of inequality between female and male members of the medical profession.

Medicine as a social organiation is not a universal structure: Health care systems vary in the extent to which physicians work in the private or public sector and in the extent to which they have as a corporate body been able to influence their numbers and the character of their work. The aim of this book is not only to review and to provide an account of women's position in medicine but also to provide an analytical framework. The text revolves around three key issues that illuminate this argument: numbers, medical practice, and feminist agendas of women physicians. The issues are addressed in all the chapters but highlighted as central analytical themes in a cross-cultural context.

Challenging previous studies of the medical profession, which have assumed for the most part a gender-neutral stance, Riska's text provides a unique focus. Medical Careers and Feminist Agendas presents a comprehensive, cross-national analysis of the current status of women in three societies where the economics of medical practice vary considerably: a market society, a welfare state, and a formerly communist society in transition. Aimed at a wide audience, this book will be useful for years to come in medical sociology, the sociology of professions, and women's studies. Its historical breadth, current data, and trenchant probing will furnish practitioners and policy-makers alike with a needed analytical tool.

Elianne Riska is Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland, and von Willebrand-Fahlbeck Professor of Sociology at bo Academi University, Finland. She was formerly assistant and then associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Her earlier published work includes Gender, Work, and Medicine and Gendered Moods.

Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography (Video Course)
DVDrip | avi | 720 x 480 | 12 Lectures (12 x 30 min)
The Teaching Co | Guide (pdf) | Taught by: Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., Yale School of Medicine

In today's era of modern Western medicine, organ transplants are routine, and daily headlines about the mysteries of DNA and the human genome promise that the secrets of life itself are tantalizingly within our reach. Yet to reach this point took thousands of years.

Course Lecture Titles
01. Hippocrates and the Origins of Western Medicine
02. The Paradox of Galen
03. Vesalius and the Renaissance of Medicine
04. Harvey, Discoverer of the Circulation
05. Morgagni and the Anatomy of Disease
06. Hunter, the Surgeon as Scientist
07. Laennec and the Invention of the Stethoscope
08. Morton and the Origins of Anesthesia
09. Virchow and the Cellular Origins of Disease
10. Lister and the Germ Theory
11. Halsted and American Medical Education
12. Taussig and the Development of Cardiac Surgery

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Publisher: Broadway; Reprint edition (March 8, 2011) | ISBN: 1400052181 | Pages: 400

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox
1st Edition. (June 22, 2010) | ISBN: 0230274714 | 295 pages

Angel of Death is a lively and powerful account of our battle against smallpox, the only disease that mankind has successfully eradicated from the planet. By weaving previously unrecorded voices in with the personal experiences of colourful historical figures such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Edward Jenner, Gareth Williams brings alive one of the most exciting success stories in the history of medicine. His book also gives original and engaging insights into the anti-vaccination campaigns which remain active today, and into the many unlearned lessons of smallpox. Angel of Death will appeal to all those moved by the excitement of discovery and stories of people fighting against adversity, and to anyone interested in history or medicine.

Clare Hanson
"A Cultural History of Pregnancy: Pregnancy, Medicine and Culture, 1750-2000"
English | ISBN: 033398644X | 2004 | 224 pages |

Hanson explores the different ways in which pregnancy has been constructed and interpreted in Britain over the last 250 years. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including obstetric texts, pregnancy advice books, literary texts, popular fiction and visual images, she analyzes changing attitudes to key issues such as the relative rights of mother and fetus and the degree to which medical intervention is acceptable in pregnancy. Hanson also considers the effects of medical and social changes on the subjective experience of pregnancy.