"With diverse constitutions, a multiplicity of approaches, styles, and aims is both expected and desired. This volume locates medical history within itself and within larger historiographic trends, providing a springboard for discussions about what the history of medicine should be, and what aims it should serve."--Jacket

This volume interrogates the foundational categories that have come to define medical science in modern South Asia. It seeks to probe issues such as what constitutes the "medical," in which context, and who defines it. This is achieved through case studies that range from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, from colonial Bengal and British Burma to present-day Andaman Islands and Ladakh. By examining the close interactions between political authorities, corporeal knowledge, and objects of governance in a sustained manner, the domains of the medical and the non-medical are revealed to be more blurred and porous than apparent. This provides us with new perspectives on the co-production of medicine and social worlds by actors and agencies in specific times and places.

Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.

The purpose of medical education is to benefit patients by improving the work of doctors. Patient centeredness is a centuries old concept in medicine, but there is still a long way to go before medical education can truly be said to be patient centered. Ensuring the centrality of the patient is a particular challenge during medical education, when students are still forming an identity as trainee doctors, and conservative attitudes towards medicine and education are common amongst medical teachers, making it hard to bring about improvements. How can teachers, policy makers, researchers and doctors bring about lasting change that will restore the patient to the heart of medical education? The authors, experienced medical educators, explore the role of the patient in medical education in terms of identity, power and location. Using innovative political, philosophical, cultural and literary critical frameworks that have previously never been applied so consistently to the field, the authors provide a fundamental reconceptualisation of medical teaching and learning, with an emphasis upon learning at the bedside and in the clinic. They offer a wealth of practical and conceptual insights into the three-way relationship between patients, students and teachers, setting out a radical and exciting approach to a medical education for the future. “The authors provide us with a masterful reconceptualization of medical education that challenges traditional notions about teaching and learning. The book critiques current practices and offers new approaches to medical education based upon sociocultural research and theory. This thought provoking narrative advances the case for reform and is a must read for anyone involved in medical education.” - David M. Irby, PhD, Vice Dean for Education, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine; and co-author of Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency "This book is a truly visionary contribution to the Flexner centenary. It is compulsory reading for the medical educationalist with a serious concern for the future - and for the welfare of patients and learners in the here and now." Professor Tim Dornan, University of Manchester Medical School and Maastricht University Graduate School of Health Professions Education.

Drs. Groopman and Hartzband reveal a clear path for making the right medical choices. Such factors as authority figures, statistics, other patients' stories, technology, and natural healing are key factors that shape choices.

A lively, accessible, and fully illustrated guide to the history of medicine, from ancient practices to cutting edge innovations. Clifford Pickover continues his popular series that includes The Physics Book and The Math Book with this volume chronicling the advancement of medicine in 250 entertaining, illustrated landmark events. Touching on such diverse subspecialties as genetics, pharmacology, neurology, sexology, and immunology, Pickover intersperses “obvious” historical milestones—the Hippocratic Oath, general anesthesia, the Human Genome Project—with unexpected and intriguing topics like “truth serum,” the use of cocaine in eye surgery, and face transplants.

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.