“Part historical novel, part futuristic adventure . . . chock full of curious lore and considerable suspense.”—Entertainment Weekly It is history's most feared disease. It turned neighbor against neighbor, the civilized into the savage, and the living into the dead. Now, in a spellbinding novel of adventure and science, romance and terror, two eras are joined by a single trace of microscopic bacterium—the invisible seeds of a new bubonic plague. In the year 1348, a disgraced Spanish physician crosses a landscape of horrors to Avignon, France. There, he will be sent on an impossible mission to England, to save the royal family from the Black Death. . . . Nearly seven hundred years later, a woman scientist digs up a clod of earth in London. In a world where medicine is tightly controlled, she will unearth a terror lying dormant for centuries. From the primitive cures of the Middle Ages to the biological police state of our near future, The Plague Tales is a thrilling race against time and mass destruction. For in 2005, humankind's last hope for survival can come only from one place: out of a dark and tortured past. Praise for The Plague Tales “Benson reveals a formidable talent as she blends historical fiction with a near-future bio-thriller.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Harrowing . . . Will give readers both nightmares and thrills . . . A carefully woven page-turner from which . . . Robin Cook and Michael Crichton could learn.”—Library Journal “A hard-to-put-down thriller steeped in historical fiction and bio-tech sci-fi.”—Middlesex News (Mass.)

Sir Donald Irvine asks what further changes have to be made to the culture and regulation of medicine to make it as trustworthy as the public today expects. As President of the General Medical Council between 1995 and 2002, Sir Donald helped shape the changes that followed disasters like the deaths of babies at Bristol and the murders of Dr Harold Shipman. In this frenetic period a new ethos of professionalism emerged, embodying the concept of the autonomous patient and more robust, transparent professional regulation founded on a partnership between the public and doctors. Sir Donald discusses candidly the struggles in the profession and with successive Governments over the key issues. He provides perspectives that are both startling and enlightening. He criticises the British Medical Association for its past resistance to accept the need for change, and explains why its role in the future must be radically different. He calls for specific fundamental changes to the National Health Service, and for Government to be separated from managing the provision of healthcare. And he outlines the qualities that the bodies regulating doctors in the future must have to succeed. In part a personal testimony, in part a clarion call for doctors to secure the new culture and re-establish public confidence, The Doctors' Tale is gripping and essential reading for everyone who cares about health.

An orphan leaves Dark Ages London to study medicine in Persia in this “rich” and “vivid” historical novel from a New York Times–bestselling author (The New York Times). A child holds the hand of his dying mother and is terrified, aware something is taking her. Orphaned and given to an itinerant barber-surgeon, Rob Cole becomes a fast-talking swindler, peddling a worthless medicine. But as he matures, his strange gift—an acute sensitivity to impending death—never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer. Arab madrassas are the only authentic medical schools, and he makes his perilous way to Persia. Christians are barred from Muslim schools, but claiming he is a Jew, he studies under the world’s most renowned physician, Avicenna. How the woman who is his great love struggles against her only rival—medicine—makes a riveting modern classic. The Physician is the first book in New York Times–bestselling author Noah Gordon’s Dr. Robert Cole trilogy, which continues with Shaman and concludes with Matters of Choice.

Not only for students and doctors, this volume contains Williams's thirteen doctor stories, several of his most famous poems on medical matters, and The Practice from The Autobiography.

In his brief life, Chekhov was a doctor, essayist, dramatist and a humanitarian. He saw no conflict between art and science or art and medicine. This collection of stories presents powerful portraits of doctors in their everyday lives, struggling with their own personal problems.

This text is designed to introduce young children to the new situation of going to the doctors in an amusing and friendly way. It is a good starting point for children and adults to discuss the experience, and can also be used by slightly older children to read for themselves.