The best History of Medicine books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, very interesting story about human cell research, the woman whose cells made it possible, and her daughter. It is a compelling true story and describing it makes me want to read it again! And I second (or third) the Mary Roach books; they are sometimes LOL funny.

I highly recommend the book <em>Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers</em> by Mary Roach. Really interesting look into the all the interesting stuff that can happen to your body after death - from typical mortuary stuff like this to organ donation to scientific research.

It's a really good read.

>The Immortal Life of Hennrietta

Based on the book by the same name by Rebecca Skloot

https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181

I just recently read "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" and among other things covers just this. Good book, would recommend.

Thank you for giving us this refresher course, about a year ago I read a great book about the Cholera epidemic in London in 1854 and I remember reading about the mechanism of diarrhea in there.

And calling physicians "Dr" is a recent invention. They "borrowed" the title to increase their status.

In the US, Johns Hopkins was the first real medical school, created in an attempt to catch the US with Europe, since our medical system SUUUUUUCKED. And in that process, that's when they borrowed "dr".

Book recommendation: The Great Influenza starts several decades before the ~~Spanish~~ Kansas Flu, with the story of how the US created a decent medical profession.

If you haven’t read the book, Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington , please do! It’s an excellent and easy to follow chronological explanation of the medical experimentation on Black people ����

I'm surprised this comment isn't higher. Funerals are extremely expensive and it seems like such a useless expense. I get it that it's for the surviving family, not for the deceased, but up to $10,000 to get together around a casket and say goodbye?

I'm originally from a country where the cost of cremation are very, very affordable (and subsidized by the government because everyone's poor and there has to be a way to handle remains that doesn't involve poor people scrambling to find a nonexistent place in a cemetery). The first time someone explained the cost of US funeral I nearly choked on my coffee.

Even that bare-bones cremation, directly through a crematory is about $1000 plus oftentimes transportation costs. It's not high enough to require insurance, but also maybe not enough for family to cover easily without going into debt.

I have a list of local universities that accept bodies as anatomical gifts for when I kick the bucket and after reading Mary Roach's Stiff about all the things that can be done with cadavers, I've made it clear to my whole family that they should do their best to donate my remains to the military for a blast tests.

Thanks, will definitely check that out!

Also responding here for /u/rock_lobsterrr since they asked for some recos as well.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson is about a deadly cholera outbreak in Victorian London. The disease killed so many that it led to the creation of the Bazalgette sewer system that London still uses today.

New York: An Illustrated History by Ric Burns, Lisa Ades, and James Sanders is a beast of a coffee table book that outlines the comprehensive history of Manhattan from swampland backwater to thriving modern metropolis. It's chock full of some fantastic stories, including the one about two reclusive brothers who were found dead in a brownstone that was heavily booby-trapped. (One was invalid, and the other was killed by his own booby traps.) The whole book is a lovingly-created tapestry of New York's ambitious, brutal, and just plain weird history.

That's all I got for now, but if I remember something else, I'll add it to my comment.

I recommend both! For Stiff, I advise getting the audiobook version. It's very well done. The book itself is not any more graphic than it needs to be and is respectful (although I did take issue with the author's apparent negative view of cosmetic surgery in an early chapter.) I found the whole thing fascinating. I was actually most fascinated though when she got to the chapter about the possibility of human head transplants. Here's the page on Amazon.

As for A Dog's Purpose, I messed up and accidentally failed to notice there was an Audible version until literally just now, so I can't attest to the quality of the reading. But the book itself (as stated, I'm only half way through) is really good. Here it is.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A poor black tobacco farmer to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, because without her we wouldn't have half the cures to diseases we have today - including the polio vaccine.

Due to aggressive immunization campaigns, children began to receive the diptheria shot in Austria. Within a year, a new mental disorder unknown to even the most knowledgeable child psychologists in the country began to appear.

The book is second in a proposed thematic trilogy of infection and disease that started with The Moth in the Iron Lung.

There is an active petition to remove the book from Amazon.

100 years ago, if you had breast cancer, they’d pretty much cut your entire chest off.

We’ve gone from that to using the body’s immune system to target and kill stage 4 cancer cells. That’s a huge improvement imo.

If you're looking for a book to read, The Emperor of All Maladies is fascinating.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

It reads almost like a mystery novel even though you know how it will end, weirdly enough. I highly recommend it to anyone who has been touched by cancer.

Rabies is a very special kind of virus - it is able to infect any mammal. It has probably evolved alongside mammals and, while it has natural reservoirs in nature (mostly bats) it is a very efficient infectious disease. There is a very well-written book about Rabies and its seemingly sid-by-side history with all warm-blooded creatures:

https://www.amazon.com/Rabid-Cultural-History-Worlds-Diabolical/dp/0143123572

Didn't say there aren't good aspects to modern medicine. There are many in fact. I wouldn't want to go back to a time before, but perhaps a mix of allopathic and homeopathic medicines would be effective too?

>Stop eating junk food and exercise to be healthier

You realize that is homeopathic medicine right? And is the right advice. If I go to a doctor I'd get a pill instead of that advice, boo allopathic. If I need surgery to remove my appendix, yay allopathic. Do you see how the world isn't a cartoon where every issue is black and white?

Smallpox is a good example of vaccination. Polio is not.

https://www.amazon.com/Moth-Iron-Lung-Biography-Polio/dp/1717583679

Subtlety is hard I know. But, believe it or not, nearly every issue in the world no matter the topic has multiple facets. Including modern medicine.

But you are totally fine buying into the narrative that you've been given that vaccines are safe, check out humphries book on amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines-Forgotten/dp/1480216895/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1526997935&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=suzanne+humphries

Just skimming through the free sample is enough to make me question things. Vaccines are a religion at this point

The Great Influenza

It's a long read - the first section of the book is a fairly detailed history of 19th Century American medicine for example. But I'm finding it pretty interesting.

Black people are less likely to be truscum because even if they jump through all the medical hoops, their doctors will often make up bullshit reasons to gate keep just because they hate black people. Black folks are often shy of medicine, psychiatry, and medical doctors due to medical racism. I am not black, but I've spent enough time around black folks to notice this.

That could be why you're not noticing a lot of black people in truscum spaces, as truscum tend to adhere to a strict medical standard unaware that medicine often discriminates against black people, forcing black people to purchase mediciations illegally or look for 'holistic' methods.

Again I am not black, I don't know that much about this, you might want to try reading Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington. She is kind of homo/trans phobic due to her religion I think, and there is a lot of stuff about black trans people she specifically didn't mention because of this, but it will still give a general understanding of this topic.

Vaccines did not save us https://preventdisease.com/news/10/102510_vaccines_did_not_save_us.shtml

Polio isn’t what you think it is https://www.amazon.com/Moth-Iron-Lung-Biography-Polio/dp/1717583679

I read a book about a couple years ago called ]Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus](https://www.amazon.com/Rabid-Cultural-History-Worlds-Diabolical/dp/0143123572) by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. Pretty good book actually. If I recall, you feel pretty normal while the virus is incubating in your system, which can has been shown to last as long as six years after the original bite, if you can believe that scary shit. Imagine getting rabies donkey you fucked more than six years ago.

There is a book called ‘Medical Apartheid’ that was published in 2008. I own it but tbh I only skimmed through it. This post makes me want to read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Apartheid-Experimentation-Americans-Colonial/dp/076791547X

If you look into the actual history and associated facts you will find it's a little more complicated than that, my brother. You can't trust on faith what they teach you in school or tell you in the mainstream media. I recommend Dr Suzanne Humphries' book, 'Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History' https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines-Forgotten/dp/1480216895

... it also travels in viral form sans saliva. In the Spanish flu epidemic it was extremely common to mandatory to wear cloth masks. Later research established that it did literally nothing. I'm on mobile so I'll look up the source and post it.in an update

Source:

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491

This is a really great book to read imo.

No, though you do generally have to be associated with something where cadavers are necessary or commonly used. Medicine is a biggie (including things like plastic surgery, where you might just get a head to work on), but also going into undertaking or criminal forensics. And don't forget there is an entire industry built on how corpses get cut up and disseminated for research. There's a pretty great book on the whole thing:

https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

A little outdated at this point, but still very good on the basics.

If you’re serious about expanding your horizons and learning what you’ve never been taught, read this: https://www.amazon.com/Moth-Iron-Lung-Biography-Polio/dp/1717583679

Otherwise, feel free to remain an “ignorant moron”

Perhaps you should read The Moth in the Iron Lung

While the pharma giants love to claim the their amazing vaccines rid us of polio, that may not actually be the entire truth. This book is definitely not "anti vax", but it is a closer examination of the numbers, and the science surrounding polio and its "elimination".

> if you prevent people from interacting you do limit the spread.

That depends entirely on your model for transmissibility. An infected has literally billions of viruses, 99% of which are non-viable, emanating from the infected. How many viruses does a victim need to inhale in order to catch covid? 1? 1000? 1,000,000? If the latter, then maybe limiting interaction would do something. If the first two, no.

I read this book over the pandemic: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491

Pretty interesting stuff. Then as now, people wore guaze masks everywhere and with great fervor. Then as now, science has shown that was basically useless. Then as now, there were quarantines everywhere. Then as now, they were useless. There were a couple of cases where isolated mountain towns in colorado shut off rail service and shot at anyone approaching with mail, who were spared. Everyone else, the measures did basically nothing.

I read. Perhaps too much.

One book I'm reading is pretty fascinating https://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491

Dealing with the influenza of 1917. Pretty interesting stuff throughout.

I haven’t heard of this particular case, but I know people in the industry and while there certainly have been some bad eggs, the reputable companies allow you to put some boundaries on how your donation will be used. It’s 100% true that if you don’t specify your donations could be used for military research. If you’re interested in the fascinating ways cadavers are used in a variety of research I suggest checking out Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. She’s a very entertaining and funny author who researches unusual science research. The military specific cadaver work is also mentioned in her book Grunt, which is all about military research.