For the gruesomely curious or medically minded, this romp through the history of medicine packs in the fascinating and often macabre ideas and practices employed during humanity's constant battle against illness and injury. Discover the pills and potions that often did more harm than good, the bizarre treatments and torturous surgeries. As well as finding strange and little-known stories, readers will also develop a deeper understanding of the pioneers and pivotal discoveries that paved the way for the modern medicine we often take for granted today. Delightfully Gothic illustration brings the information to life, complemented by photographs of key artefacts.

Medical mistakes are more pervasive than we think. How can we improve outcomes? An acclaimed MD’s rich stories and research explore patient safety. Patients enter the medical system with faith that they will receive the best care possible, so when things go wrong, it’s a profound and painful breach. Medical science has made enormous strides in decreasing mortality and suffering, but there’s no doubt that treatment can also cause harm, a significant portion of which is preventable. In When We Do Harm, practicing physician and acclaimed author Danielle Ofri places the issues of medical error and patient safety front and center in our national healthcare conversation. Drawing on current research, professional experience, and extensive interviews with nurses, physicians, administrators, researchers, patients, and families, Dr. Ofri explores the diagnostic, systemic, and cognitive causes of medical error. She advocates for strategic use of concrete safety interventions such as checklists and improvements to the electronic medical record, but focuses on the full-scale cultural and cognitive shifts required to make a meaningful dent in medical error. Woven throughout the book are the powerfully human stories that Dr. Ofri is renowned for. The errors she dissects range from the hardly noticeable missteps to the harrowing medical cataclysms. While our healthcare system is—and always will be—imperfect, Dr. Ofri argues that it is possible to minimize preventable harms, and that this should be the galvanizing issue of current medical discourse.

A New York Times Bestseller Shortlisted for both the Guardian First Book Prize and the Costa Book Award Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction A Finalist for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize A Finalist for the Wellcome Book Prize A Financial Times Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling, and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially lifesaving operation when it all goes wrong? In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to "do no harm" holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached doctors, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candor, Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.

This book is the trusted companion to three PBS segments exploring the devastating effects of the opioid epidemic, which is the worst man-made epidemic in the history of our nation, and the programs redefining the treatment and recovery process.

For the gruesomely curious or medically minded, this romp through the history of medicine packs in the fascinating and often macabre ideas and practices employed during humanity's constant battle against illness and injury. Discover the pills and potions that often did more harm than good, the bizarre treatments and torturous surgeries. As well as finding strange and little-known stories, readers will also develop a deeper understanding of the pioneers and pivotal discoveries that paved the way for the modern medicine we often take for granted today. Delightfully Gothic illustration brings the information to life, complemented by photographs of key artefacts.

“Crammed with provocative insights, raw emotion, and heartbreaking dilemmas,” (The New York Times) First, Do No Harm is a powerful examination of how life and death decisions are made at a major metropolitan hospital in Houston, as told through the stories of doctors, patients, families, and hospital administrators facing unthinkable choices. What is life worth? And when is a life worth living? Journalist Lisa Belkin examines how these questions are asked and answered over one dramatic summer at Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. In an account that is fascinating, revealing, and almost novelistic in its immediacy, Belkin takes us inside a major hospital and introduces us to the people who must make life and death decisions every day. As we walk through the hallways of the hospital we meet a young pediatrician who must decide whether to perform a risky last-ditch surgery on a teenager who has spent most of his fifteen years in a hospital; we watch as new parents battle with doctors over whether to disconnect their fragile, premature twins from the machine that keeps them breathing; we are in the operating room as a poor immigrant, paralyzed from a gunshot in the neck, is asked by doctors whether or not he wishes to stay alive; we witness the worry of a kidney specialist as he decides whether or not to transfer an uninsured baby to the county hospital down the road. We experience critical moments in the lives of these real people as Belkin explores challenging issues and questions involving medical ethics, human suffering, modern technology, legal liability, and financial reality. As medical technology advances, the choices grow more complicated. How far should we go to save a life? Who decides? And who pays?