Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know about Anesthesia demystifies the issues surrounding the types and uses of anesthesia and addresses common fears about wakefulness and pain. Straightforward language, real-life examples, photographs and illustrations guide you. Individual chapters focus on how anesthesia is used in plastic and cosmetic surgery, labor, and for dental care. Other chapters explore the special needs of babies and children, how surgeons and anesthesiologists have adapted their techniques in response to growing obesity rates, and discuss how to avoid post-operative nausea and vomiting. Throughout the book, Dr. Dhar carefully flags issues directly affecting your medical care. Each chapter ends with an invaluable checklist, called prescriptives, that highlights key points and provides space to take notes when you talk with your surgeon or anesthesia provider. The checklists help you ask questions relevant to your case and ensure that you receive and remember the answers.

"A doctor can damage a patient as much with a misplaced word as with a slip of the scalpel." In this statement, from Lawrence J. Henderson, a famous physician whose name is part of the basic science of medicine, epitomizes the central theme of The Word as Scalpel. If words, the main substance of human relations, are so potent for harm, how equally powerful they can be to help if used with disciplined knowledge and understanding. Nowhere does this simple truth apply more certainly than in the behavior of a physician. Medical Sociology studies the full social context of health and disease, the interpersonal relations, social institutions, and the influence of social factors on the problems of medicine. Throughout its history, medical sociology divides naturally into two parts: the pre-modern, represented by various studies of health and social problems in Europe and the United States until the second World War, and the modern post-war period. The modern period has seen rapid growth and the achievement of the full formal panoply of professionalism. This engaging account documents the development of professional associations, official journals, and programs of financial support, both private and governmental. Written by a distinguished pioneer in medical sociology, The Word as Scalpel is a definitive study of a relatively new, but critically important field.

A killer is stalking the corridors of Dublin's Central Maternity Hospital. A young laboratory assistant is found brutally murdered at her bench. The only clue is a blood-stained scalpel. The police investigation, led by DS Kate Hamilton, is blocked by a wall of silence from hospital staff, desperate to protect their reputations. DS Hamilton suspects the murderer is among them. As she closes in on the killer, she little realises that the hunter has become the hunted. In the same week, the newborn baby of one of Ireland's top industralists is kidnapped, a baby born at the Central Maternity Hospital only days before. Will Hamilton uncover the killer before he gets to his next victim? Will the police find the baby before it's too late? Every patient's nightmare is about to come true.

With unprecedented access to the culture of surgeons--this book describes in detail what surgeons actually do in and out of the operating room, this book reveals how they think about disease, patients, and other physicians; how their thinking is often non-scientific; how they make decisions; and how they keep secrets from patients and colleagues.

A Harvard-educated neurosurgeon reveals his experiences—in and out of the operating room—with apparitions, angels, exorcism, after-death survival, and the miracle of hope. For the millions who have enjoyed Proof of Heaven, Heaven is Real, To Heaven and Back, and Getting to Heaven—an inspiring tale from where the veil between life and death is often at its thinnest. The Scalpel and the Soul explores how premonition, superstition, hope, and faith not only become factors in how patients feel but can change outcomes. It validates the spiritual manifestations physicians see every day and empowers patients to voice their spiritual needs when they seek medical help. Finally, it addresses the mysterious, attractive powers the soul exerts during life-threatening events.