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The green labyrinth: a journey to the Amazon
By Sylvia Fraser. 2003
Sylvia Fraser recounts her journey to Peru to learn about shamans and ancient practices. The centre of her journey revolves…
around learning about ayahuasca, a plant medicine that is said to transport a person from this plane of reality into another one. 2003.Polio: an American story
By David M Oshinsky. 2005
Account of the twentieth-century search for a polio vaccine and the rivalries that developed between competing medical researchers, notably Jonas…
Salk, Albert Sabin, and Hilary Koprowski. Traces the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis campaigns and the public health experiment involving Salk's vaccine. Evokes the widespread panic over the disease. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for history. 2005.Pain: the fifth vital sign
By Marni Jackson. 2002
An exploration of the nature of pain, and why it is so poorly understood and expressed. Investigates the history of…
pain and the possibility of pain genetics. Includes stories of people in pain and pain pioneers, from eccentrics, artists, wrestlers, and writers to ministers, mothers, psychologists, philosophers, nurses, and doctors. Some strong language. 2002.Kill or cure?: how Canadians can remake their health care system (Phyllis Bruce book)
By Rick Archbold, Carolyn Bennett. 2000
Dr. Bennett compares the health care system in Canada with other countries and analyzes where the money is being spent…
or misspent. She offers a plan for creating a new health care team that will bring together doctors and patients more productively, reduce overlapping and waste, and move health care technologically into the twenty-first century. She also suggests ways to choose a good family doctor and to become a health care advocate. 2000.Healing our world: Inside Doctors Without Borders
By David Morley. 2008
General information about the organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. Also includes journal entries giving personal and detailed accounts of…
the group's work, including efforts to recover victims of an El Salvador earthquake, medical care in war-torn Congo, and treatment of the AIDS epidemic in Zambia. An introduction to a dedicated organization that gives people who live in forgotten places evidence that someone actually cares. For grades 5-8. Some descriptions of violence and some strong language. 2007.Crohn's disease & ulcerative colitis (Your personal health series)
By Fredric G Saibil. 2003
The author, a renowned expert on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), describes the normal gastrointestinal system, explains what goes wrong in…
someone with IBD. He also provides travel tips and other useful self-help strategies for living with IBD. He explains the possible complications of the disease, and the special problems of children with IBD. 2003.Better now: six big ideas to improve health care for all Canadians
By Danielle Martin. 2017
An important check-up on our health-care system--and what urgently needs fixing--from a respected doctor and passionate Medicare advocate. The author…
sees the cracks and challenges in our health-care system every day; uses real patient stories to illustrate what works in our health-care system and what doesn't; most importantly, she proposes bold fixes that are both achievable and affordable. Bestseller. 2017.Medical curiosities: a miscellany of oddities, horrors and humours
By R. M Youngson. 1997
A collection of bizarre medical stories, ranging from the horrifying to the hilarious. Stories include therapies involving strange items; the…
limitations of medical science; bizarre ailments such as Fishy Odour Syndrome; quack cures for rabies; and the weird and sometimes misdiagnosed symptoms of physical and psychological illnesses.The voice gallery: travels with a glass throat
By Keath Fraser. 2002
For twenty years, the author battled a rare disorder that caused him agonizing episodes of broken speech, leading to the…
loss of his voice. Mislead by the medical profession, convinced that the problem was psychological, Fraser finally received a proper diagnosis and found some relief with Botox, a drug mainly used to smooth out wrinkles. He then set out around the world to find others like himself, and to record in this memoir the wonders and frailties of the human voice. Some strong language. 2002.The mold in Dr. Florey's coat: the story of the penicillin miracle
By Eric Lax. 2004
Describes how in 1940 Oxford scientists Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and Norman Heatley developed an antibiotic wonder drug from the…
mold discovered by Alexander Fleming twelve years earlier. Explains penicillin's lifesaving impact on treating infections, especially of World War II soldiers. Covers the controversy surrounding the 1945 Nobel Prize. 2004.Four strong winds: understanding the growing challenges to health care
By Michael B Decter. 2000
According to Michael Decter, the forces behind the changes in our health care systems are fourfold: paradigm shifts, new public…
expectations, technology and finances. Supplemented with case studies from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, he analyzes how fiscal constraints, market competition, evolving technology and changing consumer demands are reshaping health care systems around the world at a dizzying rate. 2000.The mind's eye
By Oliver W Sacks. 2010
Neurologist uses case studies to illustrate the brain's ability to adapt to lost senses. Discusses a concert pianist who can…
no longer read music, a writer who is unable to read print after suffering a stroke, and Sacks's own macular melanoma and its effects on his visual perception. 2010.Being mortal: medicine and what matters in the end
By Atul Gawande. 2014
In his previous books, Dr. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines…
its ultimate limitations and failures - in his own practices as well as others’ - as human lives draw to a close. And he discovers how we can do better. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds, a geriatrician in his clinic, and reformers turning nursing homes upside down. He finds people who show us how to have the hard conversations and how to ensure we never sacrifice what people really care about. The subject of a PBS documentary. Bestseller. 2014.The silent thief: bone-building exercises and essential strategies to prevent and treat osteoporosis
By Karine Bohme, Frances Budden. 2001
Known as the "Silent Thief" for its quiet, symptom-free onset, osteoporosis can slowly erode bone mass. However, it can not…
only be treated, but also prevented with good advance planning, simple lifestyle strategies, and essential bone-building exercises. This book outlines a comprehensive, three-pronged approach to combating and preventing osteoporosis - one combining dietary, medical and exercise-based strategies. 2001.The lonely patient: how we experience illness
By Michael Stein. 2007
Despite years of medical training and practice, only when his brother-in-law Richard was diagnosed with a rare cancer did internist…
Stein contemplate the psychological effects of illness. During the next eight years, as Richard fought a losing battle, Stein witnessed how he and other patients dealt with chronic and terminal illnesses and how caretakers and loved ones were affected. He compares it to living in a strange, new place in which one experiences four emotional stages: betrayal, terror, loss, and loneliness. Some strong language. 2007.Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person
By Anna Mehler Paperny. 2019
NATIONAL BESTSELLERAward-winning journalist Anna Mehler Paperny's stunning memoir chronicles with courageous honesty and uncommon eloquence her experience of depression and…
her quest to explore what we know and don't know about this disease that afflicts almost a fifth of the population--providing an invaluable guide to a system struggling to find solutions. As fascinating as it is heartrending, as outrageously funny as it is serious, it is a must-read for anyone impacted by depression--and that's pretty much everybody. Depression is a havoc-wreaking illness that masquerades as personal failing and hijacks your life. After a major suicide attempt in her early twenties, Anna Mehler Paperny resolved to put her reporter's skills to use to get to know her enemy, setting off on a journey to understand her condition, the dizzying array of medical treatments on offer and a medical profession in search of answers. Charting the way depression wrecks so many, she maps competing schools of therapy, pharmacology, cutting-edge medicine, the pill-popping pitfalls of long-term treatment, the glaring unknowns and the institutional shortcomings that both patients and practitioners are up against. She interviews leading medical experts across Canada and the US, from psychiatrists to neurologists, brain-mapping pioneers to family practitioners, and others dabbling in strange hypotheses--and shares compassionate conversations with fellow sufferers.Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me tracks Anna's quest for knowledge and her desire to get well. Impeccably reported, it is a profoundly compelling story about the human spirit and the myriad ways we treat (and fail to treat) the disease that accounts for more years swallowed up by disability than any other in the world.Soap and Water & Common Sense: The Definitive Guide to Viruses, Bacteria, Parasites, and Disease
By Dr Bonnie Henry. 2020
The definitive guide to fighting coronaviruses, colds, flus, pandemics, and deadly diseases, from one of North America’s leading public health…
authorities, now updated with a new introduction on protecting yourself and others from COVID-19.Dr. Bonnie Henry, a leading epidemiologist (microbe hunter) and public health doctor at the forefront of the fight against the worldwide COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, has spent the better part of the last three decades chasing bugs all over the world — from Ebola in Uganda to polio in Pakistan, SARS in Toronto, and the H1N1 influenza outbreak across North America. Now she offers three simple rules to live by: wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, and stay at home when you have a fever.From viruses to bacteria to parasites and fungi, Dr. Henry takes us on a tour through the halls of Microbes Inc., providing up-to-date and accurate information on everything from the bugs we breathe, to the bugs we eat and drink, the bugs in our backyard, and beyond. Urgent and informative, Soap and Water & Common Sense is the definitive guide to staying healthy in a germ-filled world.With many jurisdictions considering whether or not to implement new assisted-death legislation, Choosing to Live, Choosing to Die is a…
timely look at the subject for teen readers who may not yet have had much experience with death and dying. Readers are introduced to the topic of assisted dying through the author's own story. The issue continues to be hotly debated in families, communities and countries around the world, and there are no easy answers. Choosing to Live, Choosing to Die looks at the issue from multiple perspectives and encourages readers to listen with an open mind and a kind heart and reach their own conclusions.Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe: Four Weeks that Shaped a Pandemic
By Lynn Henry, Dr Bonnie Henry. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the BC doctor who has become a household name for leading the response to the pandemic, a personal…
account of the first weeks of COVID, for readers of Sam Nutt's Damned Nations and James Maskalyk's Life on the Ground Floor.Dr. Bonnie Henry has been called "one of the most effective public health figures in the world" by The New York Times. She has been called "a calming voice in a sea of coronavirus madness," and "our hero" in national newspapers. But in the waning days of 2019, when the first rumours of a strange respiratory ailment in Wuhan, China began to trickle into her office in British Columbia, these accolades lay in a barely imaginable future.Only weeks later, the whole world would look back on the previous year with the kind of nostalgia usually reserved for the distant past. With a staggering suddenness, our livelihoods, our closest relationships, our habits and our homes had all been transformed.In a moment when half-truths threatened to drown out the truth, when recklessness all too often exposed those around us to very real danger, and when it was difficult to tell paranoia from healthy respect for an invisible threat, Dr. Henry's transparency, humility, and humanity became a beacon for millions of Canadians. And her trademark enjoinder to be kind, be calm, and be safe became words for us all to live by.Coincidentally, Dr. Henry's sister, Lynn, arrived in BC for a long-planned visit on March 12, just as the virus revealed itself as a pandemic. For the four ensuing weeks, Lynn had rare insight into the whirlwind of Bonnie's daily life, with its moments of agony and gravity as well as its occasional episodes of levity and grace. Both a global story and a family story, Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe combines Lynn's observations and knowledge of Bonnie's personal and professional background with Bonnie's recollections of how and why decisions were made, to tell in a vivid way the dramatic tale of the four weeks that changed all our lives.Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe is about communication, leadership, and public trust; about the balance between politics and policy; and, at heart, about what and who we value, as individuals and a society.The authors' advance from the publisher has been donated to charities with a focus on alleviating communities hit particularly hard by the pandemic: True North Aid with its Covid-19 response in Northern Indigenous communities, and First Book Canada, with its focus on reading and literacy for underserved, marginalized youth.Quarantine, What is Old is New
By Ian Arthur Cameron. 2007
Quarantine, What is Old is New by Ian Arthur Cameron, MD, Historian and medical doctor Cameron has produced a gripping…
history of quarantine in Canada, the forgotten story of the men and women who worked to save lives and protect the citizens of this land.A story of the early years of immigration to Canada, and of marine transportation with wooden ships sailing reluctantly into the age of steam. It also details significant aspects of the history of Canada, Nova Scotia and Halifax, and recounts the story of contagious disease in the 19th-20th Centuries. But it is much more than the past, dealing with the future of dread diseases we face today, including SARS, West Nile fever, and the feared influenza pandemics, such as those possible with the latest swine flu (H1N1) or potential bird flu (H5N1). Also contains extensive appendices, medical definitions, and is indexed for history and medicine