Author: Ivan IllichPublisher:
ISBN: 9780553105964
Category : Iatrogenic diseases
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
The Art of Medicine
Author: Herbert Ho Ping KongPublisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1770905669
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
A renowned diagnostician shares stories of his patients and explores the importance of the human factor in medicine. In The Art of Medicine, Toronto Western Hospital’s internist Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong draws on his vast dossier of personal cases and five decades as a clinician to examine the core principles of a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment. While HPK, as he is fondly known, recognizes and applauds the many invaluable innovations in medical technology, he makes the point that as disease and its management grow increasingly complex, physicians must learn to develop an arsenal of more basic skills, actively using the arts of seeing, hearing, palpation, empathy, and advocacy to provide a more humane and holistic form of care. Aimed at medical practitioners, aspiring doctors, or anyone interested in health and medicine, this book also contains interviews with more than a dozen of HPK’s patients, as well as short essays that explore the thinking of his professional colleagues on the art of medicine.
Author: Ivan IllichThe Limits of Medical Paternalism
Author: Heta HäyryPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113492383X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
The Limits of Medical Paternalism defines and morally assesses paternalistic interventions, especially in the context of modern medicine and health care, particular emphasis is given to the analysis of the conceptual background of the paternalism issue. In this book an anti-paternalistic view is presented and defended.
The Goals of Medicine
Author: Mark J. HansonPublisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589014442
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical students. The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health. The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless.
Stories and Their Limits
Author: Hilde Lindemann NelsonPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317828054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Narratives have always played a prominent role in both bioethics and medicine; the fields have attracted much storytelling, ranging from great literature to humbler stories of sickness and personal histories. And all bioethicists work with cases--from court cases that shape policy matters to case studies that chronicle sickness. But how useful are these various narratives for sorting out moral matters? What kind of ethical work can stories do--and what are the limits to this work? The new essays in Stories and Their Limits offer insightful reflections on the relationship between narratives and ethics.
Extreme Medicine
Author: Kevin Fong, M.D.Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143126296
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Little more than one hundred years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world’s environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the twentieth century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremis, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer. Doctors, scientists, and explorers all share a defining trait: they push on in the face of grim odds. Because of their extreme exploration we not only understand our physiology better; we have also made enormous strides in the science of healing. Drawing on his own experience as an anesthesiologist, intensive care expert, and NASA adviser, Dr. Kevin Fong examines how cuttingedge medicine pushes the envelope of human survival by studying the human body’s response when tested by physical extremes. Extreme Medicine explores different limits of endurance and the lens each offers on one of the systems of the body. The challenges of Arctic exploration created opportunities for breakthroughs in open heart surgery; battlefield doctors pioneered techniques for skin grafts, heart surgery, and trauma care; underwater and outer space exploration have revolutionized our understanding of breathing, gravity, and much more. Avant-garde medicine is fundamentally changing our ideas about the nature of life and death. Through astonishing accounts of extraordinary events and pioneering medicine, Fong illustrates the sheer audacity of medical practice at extreme limits, where human life is balanced on a knife’s edge. Extreme Medicine is a gripping debut about the science of healing, but also about exploration in its broadest sense—and about how, by probing the very limits of our biology, we may ultimately return with a better appreciation of how our bodies work, of what life is, and what it means to be human.
Can Medicine Be Cured?
Author: Seamus O'MahonyPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1788544536
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
A fierce, honest, elegant and often hilarious debunking of the great fallacies that drive modern medicine. By the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now. Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be 'conquered' ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion. 'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday. 'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times.
The Limits of Medicine
Author: Edward S. GolubPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226302072
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Edward Golub, distinguished researcher and former professor of immunology, shows that major advances in medicine are caused by changes in the way scientists describe disease. Bleeding, sweating, and other treatments we consider barbaric were standard treatments for centuries because they conformed to a conception of disease shared by patients and doctors. Scientific breakthroughs in the understanding of disease in the nineteenth century transformed treatment and the goals of medicine. Golub argues that the ongoing revolution in molecular genetics has opened the door to the "biology of complexity," again transforming our view of disease. This thought-provoking, timely book reveals a crucial but overlooked role of science in medicine, and offers a new vision for the goals of both science and medicine as we enter the twenty-first century.
Medical Nihilism
Author: Jacob StegengaPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198747047
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
Medical nihilism is the view that we should have little confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions. Jacob Stegenga argues persuasively that this is how we should see modern medicine, and suggests that medical research must be modified, clinical practice should be less aggressive, and regulatory standards should be enhanced.
