The alumni of Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) have made remarkable strides in medicine, academia, public health, and industry. In this they follow in the footsteps of Samuel Bard (1742–1821), a prominent early American physician and a founder of what would become VP&S. In The Caring Heirs of Doctor Samuel Bard, Peter Wortsman offers a selection of profiles of Columbia-educated doctors who have made a fundamental difference in the lives of others. The physicians profiled in this book represent the complete spectrum of MDs. They have charted new fields of medicine, resolved long-standing biochemical mysteries, discovered the causes and cures of diseases, developed vaccines, pioneered surgical procedures, helped halt epidemics, and cared for imperiled populations. Some have run hospitals, medical schools, universities, the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, city health departments, and major pharmaceutical concerns. Others practiced at the White House, climbed mountains, or flew to outer space. Still others wrote pioneering papers, edited prestigious medical journals, and authored prize-winning books and best-selling novels. In each case, the clinical training, scientific thoroughness, and humanistic values inculcated at Columbia had a formative influence on their thinking and practice. In telling their stories, The Caring Heirs of Doctor Samuel Bard illustrates the importance of clinical rigor and humanistic caring in the practice of medicine and offers readers a rare insight into the heart and soul of American medicine at its best.

'It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered' Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years. Ranging from the Romantics of the early nineteenth century to works of contemporary fiction, it includes Hoffmann's hallucinatory portrait of terror and insanity 'The Sandman'; Chamisso's influential black masterpiece 'Peter Schlemiel', where a man barters his own shadow; Kafka's chilling, disturbing satire 'In the Penal Colony'; the Dadaist surrealism of Kurt Schwitters' 'The Onion'; and Bachmann's modern fairy tale 'The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran'. Macabre, dreamlike and expressing deep unconscious fears, these stories are also spiked with unsettling humour, showing stylistic daring as well as giving insight into the darkest recesses of the human condition. Peter Wortsman's powerful translations are accompanied by brief overviews of the lives of each author, and an introduction discussing the notion of 'angst' and the stories' place in the context of German history. Translated, selected and edited with an introduction by Peter Wortsman

From the author of How We Die, the extraordinary story of the development of modern medicine, told through the lives of the physician-scientists who paved the way. How does medical science advance? Popular historians would have us believe that a few heroic individuals, possessing superhuman talents, lead an unselfish quest to better the human condition. But as renowned Yale surgeon and medical historian Sherwin B. Nuland shows in this brilliant collection of linked life portraits, the theory bears little resemblance to the truth. Through the centuries, the men and women who have shaped the world of medicine have been not only very human, but also very much the products of their own times and places. Presenting compelling studies of great medical innovators and pioneers, Doctors gives us a fascinating history of modern medicine. Ranging from the legendary Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, to Andreas Vesalius, whose Renaissance masterwork on anatomy offered invaluable new insight into the human body, to Helen Taussig, founder of pediatric cardiology and co-inventor of the original "blue baby" operation, here is a volume filled with the spirit of ideas and the thrill of discovery.

During his 31-year tenure as director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), Donald A.B. Lindberg M.D. dramatically increased access to knowledge about health issues, medicine, medical care, the health professions, and health literacy. As an enthusiastic visionary with a plan, his aim was to bring about a more efficient transfer and use of information and data. Dr. Lindberg and the NLM helped transform and reshape medicine and the health system in the 20th and 21st centuries. Dr. Lindberg envisioned, encouraged, and supported the development of electronic health records and telemedicine. Coupled with the evolution of the Internet, these technologies made health systems more efficient for research, the delivery of clinical services, the education of health professionals, bioethics, improving the public’s health literacy, and disease prevention strategies. Dr. Lindberg also was committed to enhancing the capacity of underserved and minority populations to make use of NLM’s health information resources. Transforming Biomedical Informatics and Health Information Access is a tribute to Don Lindberg and the NLM. The book is divided into four sections. The first documents the advances in biomedical informatics during Dr. Lindberg’s career, emphasizing the contributions made by teams of talented individuals at the NLM. The second section describes how the NLM’s creation of new methods of access to diverse biomedical databases improved information access for healthcare professionals, biomedical researchers, and the public. The third section explains how NLM’s outreach programs improved access to health information among underrepresented audiences and communities. The more informal fourth section provides brief memoirs about Dr. Lindberg’s life, character, and humanism.