Book Description

As a consequence of the obesity epidemic, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents is increasing. For medical trend watchers and health care professionals alike, this groundbreaking book covers epidemiology of type 2 diabetes in youth; pathophysiology of type 2 in youth; case-finding criteria; early recognition of risk factors; prevention of obesity in this population; and more.

Book Description

With The Measure of Our Days, Dr. Jerome Groopman established himself as an eloquent new voice in the literature of medicine. In these eight moving portraits, he offers us a compelling look at what is to be learned when life itself can no longer be taken for granted.

These stories are diverse--from Kirk, an aggressive venture capitalist determined to play the odds with controversial chemotherapy treatments; to Elizabeth, an imperious dowager humbled by a rare blood disease; to Elliott, who triumphs over leukemia and creates for himself a definition of success--but each, in the words of Maggie Scarf, "transmute the misery of terrible suffering into a marvelous celebration of the sweetness of human life." Far from medical case studies, these are spiritual journeys of questioning and self-awareness, embarked on by the physician as well as the patient. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Compassion of a physician
This book genuinely portrays the dynamic aspect of a patient-doctor relationship. Jerome Groopman is an extraordinary writer and physician who is able to touch the hearts of his patients. Through his eight powerful and compelling stories, he is able to give the reader insight and capture the life lessons learned from these terminally ill patients.

Dr. Groopman leads us through the lives of eight patients with a terminal illness. The book starts with Kirk, an aggressive businessman who is afflicted with kidney cancer and is determined to fight his battle with a new chemotherapy treatment only to realize that his life has been empty. Groopman then moves on to describe a Catholic boy who underwent successful therapy from leukemia, but died of AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion. Another patient, a research fellow in Groopman's own research laboratory has AIDS from a blood transfusion because he was a hemophiliac. My favorite story is Cindy, a single woman with AIDS who boldly fights with Groopman over her fervent desire to adopt a child. Each tragic account illuminates the empathy and compassion Dr. Groopman has toward his patients. He would hug them, hold their hand, listen to them, and share their tears.

The Measure of Our Days is a powerful book and the reader gains and understanding of the frailty of human life. The dialogue between Dr. Groopman and his patients is compelling. By reading this book, we can appreciate and value our own lives and the life lessons learned from these terminally ill patients. Definitely a good book, especially for people who are interested in pursuing a career in medicine.

Detailed tales of a good clinician
This book presents excellent accounts of a doctor who, above all else, is a good clinician. The accounts contain personal discussion, interesting patients, hard science, and lessons about both medicine and life. Admittedly, this last phrase, "lessons about both medicine and life" sounds cliche but as an obviously empathetic, observant and disciplined clinician, Groopman is well prepared to talk about the serious,universal issues that often arise in his specific line of work.

Though he is a superspecialist, a nice aspect of this book is that Groopman is very objective about medicine overall. The technology he spends works on in lab is not at all treated as a panacea. Simultaneously, he does not shun or wholly embrace alternative medicine. It is simply another example of why he is a good clinician, qualifying the book further.

An excellent, very fast read.

Somewhat engaging but mostly pretentious
Although the eight patients profiled in this slim volume have interesting stories to tell, their experiences are diluted in the telling. Jerome Groopman, incongruously, tries to further the Cult of the Physician: Doctors are supermen, they can do no wrong. While reading about these patients' experiences, you start to notice that Groopman appears to be the most wonderful person in the entire world. He's a professor at a prestigious medical school, with his own laboratory and staff; he maintains a full clinical schedule; he writes for the New York Times, New Yorker, and New Republic; he's an attentive family man with lots of friends. But, lo and behold, he also has time to take a deep, personal interest in each patient that comes his way. He sits with them for hours at a time, he goes to their homes to check on their progress, he visits them in foreign countries after attending medical conferences, he always returns phone calls. More importantly, he always knows what he's doing, he always has something good and interesting to offer his patients. Groopman essentially updates the old model of the physician-patient relationship, where the eminent physician dictates a wise and enlightened course of treatment for a supplicatory patient.

In the end, his self-presentation defies belief, and coats the otherwise positive and amazing aspects of the stories he tells with a glib patina.

Not perfect, but a good book
As a physician also working with human mortality and fragility on a daily basis, this book resonated deeply with my experience. I found the eloquence in the lives of the 8 patients, however, as opposed to Dr. Groopman's narrative. While obviously a great man, I found his ego distracting and reminiscent of "old school" physicians - patronizing, omniscient and infallible. He alluded to himself way too many times at the expense of his patient's story.

This is not to say I would not recommend this book to a friend, I would. What the patients have to offer is priceless.

Eight powerful stories.
Jerome Groopman is familiar to many by now as a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, where at least one of the essays in the current book first appeared. Besides being a prolific writer, he also finds time in his day to be the Recanati Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a leading researcher on cancer and AIDS. One wonders how he manages all this, but he does, and in the course of his work he manages also to persuades some of his patients facing life-threatening illness to sit for their literary portraits. The 8 individuals represented in this book (two of whom were personal friends of Groopman before their illness struck) and Groopman, their caring scribe, are to be thanked for this finely crafted and enthralling account of persons facing death and their relationships with their doctor. Groopman explains the doctor's side of it:

I have stood countless times...looking into the faces of a family and telling them their loved one has cancer. You steel yourself for the moment. ...You calm your face and maintain a firm voice, so that while you tell the family the truth, that the disease is aggressive and its treatment toxic, you simultaneously assert another truth, that there is a chance, a real chance, that the cancer can be defeated and the loved one saved. With this compassionate but determined show of force, you prevent the family and the patient from being overwhelmed by the ferocious surprise attack of the illness. Yes, you emphasize again that a cure is never assured. But once this is said, you move decidedly from despair to hope. You have to show that the battle already has been engaged, that you are the general of the army, that there is a strategy in place, that powerful weapons are at hand, and that no mercy will be shown the enemy. And as you mobilize your resources, of medical science and clinical experience, to fight to save this person, you look hard into the eyes of the family and search for the core of their strength. ...You need to understand this inner strength, where it comes from, how deep and resilient it is. Once you find it and comprehend it, you try to take it in your hand and fuse it with your own, because together this creates the unified forced required to sustain the patient through the hell that awaits and to carry him back to normal life.(90-91)

The book can be viewed as a study of these fusions of force. The religious ruminations of doctor and patient and felicitous metaphors lifted from other areas of life - sports, venture capital, art, etc. weave together in the intense dialogue that evolves between the two allies in the struggle, a dialogue that may be crucial to the progress of treatment or, when need be, essential to a well-managed surrender. Will appeal to: any reader, but especially spiritual highly literate readers. ... Read more

Book Description

This brilliant work of social history reveals the hidden impact of syphilis on many of history's famous figures--from Wilde to Hitler to Abraham Lincoln--and its influence on the culture they created.

Was Beethoven experiencing syphilitic euphoria when he composed "Ode to Joy"? Did van Gogh paint "Crows Over the Wheatfield" in a fit of diseased madness right before he shot himself?

Was syphilis a stowaway on Columbus's return voyage to Europe? The answers to these provocative questions are likely "yes," claims Deborah Hayden in this riveting investigation of the effects of the "Pox" on the lives and works of world figures from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. Writing with remarkable insight and narrative flair, Hayden argues that biographers and historians have vastly underestimated the influence of what Thomas Mann called "this exhilarating yet wasting disease." Shrouded in secrecy, syphilis was accompanied by wild euphoria and suicidal depression, megalomania and paranoia, profoundly affecting sufferers' worldview, their sexual behavior and personality, and, of course, their art. Deeply informed and courageously argued, Pox has already been heralded as a major contribution to our understanding of genius, madness, and creativity. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

genuinely interesting and well-researched, if unfocused
PERSPECTIVE: physician with interest in infectious diseases

Ms. Hayden's thesis here is an interesting one - not only did syphilis afflict many well-known historical figures, but its late-stage effects on the mind (as she terms it, "syphilitic euphoria") contributed to the creative zenith of authors and aritists, as well as shaping the lives and deeds of the powerful and influential. The first section of the book deals with the historical origins (and controversies) surrounding the origins of syphilis outbreaks in the late 1400's, as well as a reasonably adequate lay description of the disease. The main section deals with several figures from the 19th and 20th century, including well-known composers, philosophers, authors, artists, and political figures, none of whom have been confirmed to have syphilis, but suspected of such to greater or lesser degrees. In each case, she makes an argument for their infection and its effect on their lives and work, based on available historical documents, medical records, etc... The final sections include brief paragraphs discussing confirmed famous syphilitics, a list of general clues the author used in analyzing each case, and a reproduction of a 1926 case study on a patient.

Overall, the novel is flows well, and is easy and entertaining to read. Ms. Hayden's research is extensive and well-documented, and while she is not formally medically trained, she has certainly pored over medical texts from previous centuries up to today in order to educate herself and her readers.

Despite this, there are several issues of note. The "syphilitic euphoria" as a genesis for works of genius, medically, seems a bit of a strech in both its existance (as she characterizes it) and influence. It seems as though she loses her focus at some point - while earlier chapters, such as those on Schubert and Nietzsche, seem goal-oriented towards proving the presence of the infection, and its role in their work, other chapters (Lincoln and Hitler, notably) seem more like meandering discussions that, while interesting, ultimately come to no real conclusion as to the role of the disease. Additionally, while she seems convinced herself that each subject indeed had syphilis, and she works to makes a good case for each, some of her leaps of fact and logic seem a bit long. Ms. Hayden does occasionally make factual medical errors when discussing certain symptoms and their associations. Along those lines, she seems much more comfortable discussing such facts in the less precise medical terminology of "days gone by" than in present-day terms - this may be rooted in both her supposition that modern physicians know nothing of true end-stage syphilis (because we've been able to treat the infection early, successfully, with antibiotics for many decades, although how she can read the same old syphilis texts that physicians can, and be better than them at its diagnosis is a bit of a mystery to me) and that less-specific terminology allows her to make her cases better. The last sections also strike me as "fluff," of mild interest only.

FINAL WORD: The above quibbles aside, there is a lot to enjoy here, especially given Ms. Hayden's excellent historical research and entertaining writing style. A worthwhile read, but keep in mind that a lot of the author's conjectures are just that - conjectures. Buy it, check it out from the library, or buy it and donate it to your local library.

Best Book on a Hidden Disease
I am a medical doctor and long-term student of VD in American history. Ms. Hayden has succeeded in a difficult task: writing convincingly about a medical subject when she is not a medical person. She enlisted help from the best of the best, such as my old professor Dr. Eugene Farber, and learned well from their teachings.

Without retrospective blood tests, it is impossible to PROVE that a person before 1900 had syphilis, but the combined wisdom of generations of doctors can give us reasonable certainty, and this Ms. Hayden has given us.

Some reviewer has asserted that Beethoven could not have had syphilis, because he wrote great music. (Perhaps logic and epistemology are no longer taught in our schools.)

I give thumbs up to this book for breaking new ground in an informative and thoroughly researched way.

Best on causes of death
This is a very medical, military, and philosophical book about the pox. Much of the text is concerned with what doctors knew at certain points between 1492, when a large number of men who traveled with Christopher Columbus (who died in 1506) started raging epidemics of various diseases on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and 1948, when Adolf Hitler's doctors died. The cause of death of everyone mentioned in the book is not included, but one of the doctors responsible for the information in the Military Intelligence Service Center Report, "Hitler as Seen by His Doctors," "Brandt was executed on 2 June 1948 at Landsberg prison for his role in Hitler's euthanasia program." (p. 290). The form of poetic justice involved in any consideration of the pox is similar to a poem of the early Greek general Archilochus, selection 184 in 7 GREEKS/ TRANSLATIONS BY GUY DAVENPORT, p. 55:

In the hospitality of war
We left them their dead
As a gift to remember us by.

In 1495, the French army of 18,000 horsemen and 20,000 foot soldiers for Charles VIII, king of France, took Naples, defended by Spanish troops and some women who came with them from Spain, but the people "expelled Charles within a week. . . . Poor Charles was the first of many monarchs to fall prey to the disease. Charles died of apoplexy three years later, at age twenty-eight, after hitting his head against the frame of a low door." (p. 13). Spanish "soldiers expelled the women, who were cheerfully accepted by the French soldiers--an early example of germ warfare." (p. 14).

Hitler's heartbeat, heard through a stethoscope, had an extra musical note due to aortic weakness. In 1875, a British army surgeon "found that about two-thirds of the records of fifty-three cases of rupturing aortic aneurysm had a previous history of syphilis." (p. 34). Beethoven, (pp. 71-88), Schubert (pp. 89-96), and Schumann (pp. 97-111), then Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) whose "agonized tone" could be traced "to his infection," (p. 314) get credit for setting the vibrations of their nerves to music.

Nietzsche, with a case that is well documented on pages 172-199 of this book, is the key philosopher for understanding the psychic link which bind the subjects of this book. Jaspers and Jung are mentioned a few times, but Hayden can look directly at his work for evidence that "He thought of a future time when his work would be understood and appreciated. In all these things we see a parallel with van Gogh during that same year. Pure creative inspiration, mental illness, or paretic disinhibition: whatever the combination, the result in each case was astonishing." (p. 199).

Many doctors knew what Nietzsche was suffering from, even if his mother and sister didn't know (p. 181) what he admitted when he was taken to "the nerve clinic of Dr. Wille, an expert on general paralysis of the insane," (p. 174) in Basel in January, 1889. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was the rare author who told people, "I've got the Pox!" (pp. 142, 144). His story, "Bed Number 29" is summarized on page 145 of this book. The victim in the story "was infected by the invading Prussians, but she got her revenge by passing her disease on to as many soldiers as possible. . . . she boasts that her score of deaths is greater than his." Deborah Hayden has done a tremendous amount of correlation of the information relating to the years from 1492 to 1948, but the psychic roots of much that she found is all too common, even though spirochetes did not provide a basis for the modern understanding of syphilis until they were discovered in 1905.

Recently in Science magazine (17 July 1998) the complete genome sequence of Treponema pallidum, the syphilis spirochete, was revealed to have 1,138,006 coding pairs containing 1,041 predicted coding sequences (Hayden, p. 26) but we still don't know everything. "Existing diagnostic tests are less than optimal. Even after treatment with penicillin some patients harbor spirochetes in `treponemal sanctuaries' such as the eye and the lymph glands. Many of the details of its life cycle remain unanswered." (p. 27).

My favorite page 252, shows a young Hitler staring out of a picture in the top half of the page, then has, "In 1936 Hitler hired a syphilologist, Theo Morell, to be his private physician." By 1941, there is "a pattern of syphilis beginning with one of the most terrifying manifestations of late syphilis, disease of the heart." The main comedy of the book is the urban legend aspect, how many people relied on beliefs which had no scientific basis, which is not funny as it applies to modern HIV infections on page 45. In Hitler's case, I think the funniest anecdote is related by Putzi Hanfstaengl, "who became Hitler's foreign press secretary" (p. 254) though "He ended up in Washington writing psychological profiles of Hitler and the Nazi inner circle for his old friend from the Harvard Club, Franklin D. Roosevelt." (p. 255). The funny story was related by Putzi to Rudolph Binion "in the early 1970s" (p. 255) and elaborated in this book through page 256, when this book turns to "In Landsberg prison after the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler wrote thirteen pages in MEIN KAMPF about syphilis being the direst threat to the future of the race," based on the belief "that syphilis could be inherited for many generations." (p. 264). In the syphilis epidemic after World War I, even Hitler had to wonder, "Finally, however: who can know whether he is sick or healthy? Are there not numerous cases in which a patient apparently cured relapses and causes frightful mischief without himself expecting it at first?" (p. 264). Please remember, "a glassblower with an infectious mucous patch in his mouth who infected a coworker when he passed a glassblowing pipe." (pp. 182-183). This book is not entirely about sex.

An ok book, but a little dry
In this book, I really enjoyed the history of syphilis and how it was treated back in the day. That is where the two stars come in. However, towards the middle of the book I was getting sick of her trying to twist every little illness into a symptom of syphilis. Oh Shubert had the sniffles....MUST BE SYPHILIS. Lincoln was depressed.... MUST BE SYPHILIS. I am sorry to say but not everything was syphilis back then. Like Mary Lincoln for example, her husband was shot in the back of the head while he was sitting next to her.... I don't blame her for going mad! A lot of her points are overkilled, and don't make sense. These are one of those books that you can pick up in the middle and read a chapter and not miss anything. I think in every chapter she explains the symptoms and every detail of syphilis. I would recomend another book

A book on syphillis that reads like a detective story
Early in January, 1889, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche collapsed on the street in Turin (Torino), Italy. He was taken to his mother in Germany and placed in a mental institution. After a few months he was released to the care of his family, where he lived another eleven years as an invalid.   

After Nietzsche's death in 1900, Nietzsche's close friend, Franz Overbeck, divulged that the director of the hospital where Nietzsche had been taken swore him to secrecy and then told him that Nietzsche had syphilis.   

The consensus of contemporary scholars, including Deborah Hayden, in her study Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, is that Nietzsche indeed suffered from syphilis, a disease often called the 'French disease" and the 'Great Imitator" because its symptoms mimic those of many other diseases.   

Deborah Hayden, who lives in Mill Valley, Calif., is an independent scholar and marketing executive. She has lectured widely on "Syphilis and Creativity," most recently at UCSF Medical School, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Bay Area History of Medicine Society.

Now, in Pox, Hayden has written a provocative and controversial work that reads much like a detective story.

"Pox began," writes Hayden, "with my curiosity about syphilis ... to learn more about Nietzsche's illness. But the project quickly expanded as I found one reference after another to other cases--all hidden, mostly disputed--in the higher reaches of culture and politics."   

Who, besides Nietzsche, are candidates for the dreaded pox? Hayden devotes chapters to Christopher Columbus, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Charles Baudelaire, Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), James Joyce, and Adolf Hitler.   

In a final "Pox Gallery," Hayden writes: "Suspected (or known) syphilitics include Idi Amin, Darwin, Donizette, Dostoevsky, Durer, Lenin, Meriwether Lewis, Mozart, Napoleon, Paginini, Edgar Allan Poe, Rabelais, Stalin, Tolstoi, and Woodrow Wilson."   

In tracking down the mysteries of pox, there often is no "smoking gun" to establish beyond doubt that a particular subject suffered from syphilis. However, in many of these cases Hayden presents enough circumstantial evidence to convince an impartial jury.   

Many readers will bristle to hear that Beethoven's magnificent Ninth Symphony, including the "Ode to Joy," was probably composed during a mystical euphoria brought on by tertiary syphilis.   

In a quantum universe, almost anything is possible. But one should bear in mind that possibilities do not automatically or necessarily translate into probabilities or actualities.   

The bottom line is that many of Hayden's speculations are fascinating, but they are just that: speculations that must be viewed skeptically.

Roy E. Perry of Nolensville is an amateur philosopher, Civil War buff, classical music lover, and chess enthusiast. He is an advertising copywriter at a Nashville Publishing House.

Syphilis.--(from Syphilus, hero of the poem Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus (Syphilis or the French disease) (1530) by Girolamo Fracastoro (1553), Italian poet, physician, and astronomer: a chronic contagious usually venereal and often congenital disease caused by a spirochete (Treponema pallidum) and if left untreated producing chancres, rashes, and systemic lesions in a clinical course with three stages continued over many years. Compare Primary Syphilis, Secondary Syphilis, and Tertiary Syphilis.--From Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition ... Read more

Reviews (4)

A Manual for the Clinician and informed Lay-Person
The Manual of Pain Management is the ideal reference guide for the busy clinician who needs a brief synopsis of major pain diagnoses and how to start treating the pain. The chapters are self-contained and provide a basic framework of the diagnosis and treatment of pain complaints. Each chapter was written by an expert in that area.

The manual is organized with descriptions of the most common pain syndromes classified anatomically and by syndrome type. Basic physiologic concepts are also included: required testing, medications, procedures and therapies commonly used for patients.

There are new standards for practice promulgated by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). This book addresses some of the questions a clinician might have.

While the Manual is directed at clinicians, it is surprisingly easily read by the informed lay-person who is trying to wade through much of the often contradictory advice offered by the wealth of pain guidebooks and miracle remedies. Such a broad references is a valuable adjunct to the flood of material available on the internet, and can be of use to help separate the wheat from the chaff. This "ease-of-use" is a result of the number of chapters prepared by practitioners that balances a more research oriented focus of many other works.

informative and well written
This is a book that is very informative and well written. It has something for the medical student all the way up to a seasoned subspecialist. It's multidisciplinary approach and well illustrated "how to" philosophy make it a must have for any pain library.

The One Book To Keep
If I were told that I could only have five books to take with me on a lifelong journey, one of them would be "The Manual of Pain Management." And the other four would be the next four books Fausett and Warfield write.

Great Resource
I used the first edition of this book when I was a resident, and this edition should be part of every medical and surgical residents' library. I bought this edition for my office. The book is well organized and well written. The review of the science of pain is especially good for those of us in practice who want to stay current. The tables are very good and the illustrations are helpful. I was disappointed that there wasn't more on some of the orthopedic surgical options for patients suffering from back pain, but the chapter on neurosurgical approaches is especially good. The illustrations for some of the "how-to" chapters are very good.

The chapter on legal issues is a must read for all clinicians. The chapter on geriatric issues is also very good. ... Read more

Book Description

A generation has passed since a physician first noticed that women who drank heavily while pregnant gave birth to underweight infants with disturbing tell-tale characteristics. Women whose own mothers enjoyed martinis while pregnant now lost sleep over a bowl of rum raisin ice cream. In Message in a Bottle, Janet Golden charts the course of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) through the courts, media, medical establishment, and public imagination.

Long considered harmless during pregnancy (doctors even administered it intravenously during labor), alcohol, when consumed by pregnant women, increasingly appeared to be a potent teratogen and a pressing public health concern. Some clinicians recommended that women simply moderate alcohol consumption; others, however, claimed that there was no demonstrably safe level for a developing fetus, and called for complete abstinence. Even as the diagnosis gained acceptance and labels appeared on alcoholic beverages warning pregnant women of the danger, FAS began to be de-medicalized in some settings. More and more, FAS emerged in court cases as a viable defense for people charged with serious, even capital, crimes and their claims were rejected.

Golden argues that the reaction to FAS was shaped by the struggle over women's relatively new abortion rights and the escalating media frenzy over "crack" babies. It was increasingly used as evidence of the moral decay found within marginalized communities--from inner-city neighborhoods to Indian reservations. With each reframing, FAS became a currency traded by politicians and political commentators, lawyers, public health professionals, and advocates for underrepresented minorities, each pursuing separate aims.

Book Description

This compact but comprehensive guide brings together many of the world's leading authorities in the practical management of HIV infection. It represents an international approach, providing detailed and up-to-date information on the clinical presentation, diagnosis and management of the various manifestations of HIV infection. Much attention is paid to drug treatment, and the major clinical trials are reviewed and evaluated.All the significant complications of HIV are presented, with management guidelines, and chapters are also devoted to the psychiatric aspects of HIV and AIDS, the HIV-infected traveller and issues involving health-care providers. Drawing on the best expertise available in the United States, Australia and Europe, this book is an essential clinical reference for physicians. ... Read more

Book Description

The expertise of toxicologists and statisticians to provide a rigorous and practical account of the interpretation of mutagenicity test data has been drawn upon for this volume. Now, chemicals such as drugs, food additives and pesticides all need careful screening to eliminate potentially mutagenic compounds.Although guidelines exist on the performance of these tests, advice on data evolution is scarce.This niche is now filled by providing the statistical background necessary for toxicologists to understand, design and interpret mutagenicity tests. In addition to the nine chapters dealing with the different tests explained, there is an introductory chapter on some of the statistical principles included, a glossary of useful terms and an appendix providing vital information on the availability of computer software. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An excellent choice
The book's editor is a world renowned professor in pediatric infectious diseases. The content of the book is complete and written in a useful fashion as go gain a lot of information quickly.

Unfortunately, several typo's have been noted. ... Read more

Book Description

This work is widely considered to be the most reliable and comprehensive resource on the topic of muscle diseases and disorders.

An extraordinary amount of new information has entered the field of myology since the publication of the first edition of Myology in 1986, primarily as a result of advances in molecular biology. This second edition contains over 50% new and revised material, including important information on muscular dystrophy and inflammatory disease. It also develops a better understanding of mitochondrial diseases and the genetic basis of inherited diseases. ... Read more

Book Description

This is not another book about how AIDS is out of control in Africa and Third World nations, or one complaining about the inadequacy of secured funds to fight the pandemic. The author looks objectively at countries that have succeeded in reducing HIV infection rates...along with a worrisome flip side to the progress. This book is a bellwether in the escalating controversy, offering persuasive evidence in support of the ABC approach and exposing the fallacies and motivations of its opponents. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Everything you thought you knew about AIDS may be wrong
Reviewer: Maureen Sciortino;

This book challenges the simple formula of "unprotected sex = HIV infection, so use a condom." The author provides evidence from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to show that reduction in casual sex, not condoms, is the major factor which explains HIV prevalence reduction.
... Read more

Book Description

In this absorbing story of the changing life of a community, the authors of Deaf in America reveal historical events and forces that have shaped the ways that Deaf people define themselves today.Inside Deaf Culture relates Deaf people's search for a voice of their own, and their proud self-discovery and self-description as a flourishing culture.

Padden and Humphries show how the nineteenth-century schools for the deaf, with their denigration of sign language and their insistence on oralist teaching, shaped the lives of Deaf people for generations to come.They describe how Deaf culture and art thrived in mid-twentieth century Deaf clubs and Deaf theatre, and profile controversial contemporary technologies.

Most triumphant is the story of the survival of the rich and complex language American Sign Language, long misunderstood but finally recently recognized by a hearing world that could not conceive of language in a form other than speech.In a moving conclusion, the authors describe their own very different pathways into the Deaf community, and reveal the confidence and anxiety of the people of this tenuous community as it faces the future.

Inside Deaf Culture celebrates the experience of a minority culture--its common past, present debates, and promise for the future.From these pages emerge clear and bold voices, speaking out from inside this once silenced community.

Book Description

Gestational diabetes is a rare and little-understood form of diabetes. It only appears in pregnancy and usually disappears afterward, but proper self-care during pregnancy is still crucial. Gestational Diabetes: What to Expect, a comprehensive guide for the woman with gestational diabetes, explains the proper elements of self-care, including nutritious meal planning, proper insulin therapy, and accurate blood sugar monitoring.

Reviews (1)

Too simplistic
This book was written for those without a high school education. It did not contain any relevant information that you couldn't get from a basic pamplet, and included some condescending sections on stopping hard drug abuse and contraception. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Not only for HIV education efforts!
This is an exceptional and courageously written book. It is a'must read' for anyone involved in efforts to get groups of people to change their behavior. Limitations of public education efforts identified in this book can be applied to numerous public health endeavors. Without the insights of this author, we will continue to make attempts to apply programs that will fail because we have failed to understand the context in which the undesirable behavior patterns occur. This is a tough, sobering and realistic piece of work.
I also found it a pleasure to read, profoundly interesting, although often tragically so.

Damocles Sword
There are few books about AIDS that are worth reading, let alone reviewing. The vast majority remain constrained by the rigid confines of their conceptualisation, almost none daring to suggest that their conceptualisation might be wrong. The author of this book is one of the very few who dare do this and as a result has produced a book which is not only outstanding intellectually but should also be mandatory reading for anyone who has an interest in programmes that attempt to have an impact on any one of the multitude of epidemics of HIV infection. In fact it should be mandatory reading for anyone who has an interest in programmes that attempt to change the way people are in relation to what are called the development problems of today.

The book describes the author's experiences with a project that started out by trying to reduce the risk of infection by HIV amongst three groups in a mining town in South Africa - female sex workers, male miners, and young people. There were two approaches to doing this: peer education and the "promotion of partnerships between a diverse array of community groupings of stakeholders to coordinate and support the variety of local HIV-prevention efforts in such a way that maximized their overall cumulative effectiveness". The interventions chosen were all invested with the glowing approbation of the international 'AIDS project' community as prime examples of what should be done in such situations. In terms of having any impact on the epidemic or on the sexual culture of the area the project has so far been a failure. The author analyses the reasons for this failure in a number of analytical contexts.

The author is very well placed to analyse the history of the project. She herself as a social psychologist had been involved in the township in 1995 in trying to understand the reasons why there is such a high prevalence of HIV infection amongst the miners and sex workers despite their obvious knowledge of the existence of HIV and the ways in which it is transmitted. The studies themselves form part of the opening chapters, and provide very good insight into the conditions of these people's lives and the enormous social factors that influence their lives and decision-making. The following chapters describe the way the project grew as a result of a drive from some local people for work that would affect the growing numbers of people with AIDS and from a group of scientists and professionals (including the author) who had an interest in the area. One chapter provides the initial theoretical justification for the various actions that were taken, with heavy leaning on the writings of Paulo Freire on the conscientisation side, Pierre Bourdieu for social capital, and on the experiences of peer education with sex workers in Zimbabwe of David Wilson and others.

The book will be invaluable for the discussion of the importance of the social context for behaviour, and indeed will be read by many for that alone. It also details the very many ways in which the project's ideals fell by the wayside (the rates of sexually transmitted infection in miners actually rose during the period of the project, there were many difficulties with the peer education approach for young people in school, the stakeholders were far from unified in their vision or even interest) or were partially successful (there were several changes amongst the sex workers), and again these experiences will be as interesting as they are familiar to many who work with such projects.

However this book goes far beyond such a discussion. She points to the inadequacies of our current theoretical and modelling frameworks for such interventions; to the fact that the stakeholders who were involved did not see themselves as part of the epidemic or as people whose behaviour had to change; to the fact that the designers and researchers of the project had much discord and competition amongst themselves; to the great mistrust that developed between the researchers and much of the 'community'. In fact, although the author tries to scotch the problem with the definition of 'community' by stating that in this case the term 'community' refers to the people in a geographic area, the tension behind this definition continues throughout the book as it is acknowledged that only a few of the many individuals and groups in the area were in fact being requested to change their ways - the paternalism and continued power of the 'senior' stakeholders continuing throughout.

The value of the book is still more. The lessons drawn in the concluding chapter smack of a level of desperation in the author to find lessons, and this may perhaps be the only weakness of the book. In these lessons the author still struggles to keep the idea going that somehow in a better world the interventions could have had an impact if only people had carried them through according to the wishes of the project designers. The deep question the author raises in the mind of the reader is whether such approaches can ever work in relation to an epidemic (as opposed to being valuable for a few individuals or groups). This question is not actually present in the book (although there are numerous hints of the author's disquiet concerning the mismatch between the daily reality of people's lives and the wishes and interests of the project managers) but it hangs over ever sentence as did the sword over Damocles. As for Dionysius in relation to those who wield power, it is a question hanging over all those who praise mindlessly the black art of development.

Compelling critical analysis of HIV prevention efforts
If you are interested in how to prevent HIV, in community development work, or in what happens when academic ideals meet local community realities, then this book will stimulate, inform, surprise, and even galvanise you. This important book offers a unique view of the inside workings of an actual community HIV prevention programme as it unfolded. It details the failures of the programme, in order to insist that we must make much more effort to address the hard questions of economic and gender inequalities and political will. By making visible the everyday power dynamics among community members, stakeholders and project workers, the book makes a major contribution to understanding the problematic process of community development. ... Read more

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A MUST-READ for anyone interested in the HIV / AIDS crisis
In the first few pages of her book, Susan Hunter explains that HIV / AIDS is the first new disease on our planet since the 1400s; it is the leading infectious disease threat in the world today, outpacing tuberculosis and malaria by 2:1. It is the first disease to be considered a global threat to both national and international security. By 2010, the global human death toll from this disease will be higher than the COMBINED casualties of WWI, WWII, the Civil War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the first Chinese Communist War, the Spanish Civil War, the Taiping Rebellion, the Great War in La Plata and the partition of India. Every 18 months, more people die from HIV / AIDS than during the Holocaust. In some parts of Africa, they literally are running out of land to bury the bodies.

Ms. Hunter, with her years of experience working with the UN on Africa, is in a unique position to offer an assessment of the effects of this disease on that continent as well as predictions of its spread globally.

In the United States, many have become complacent about HIV / AIDS, believing that this is a disease which can be controlled with a few pills -- and as a result, HIV / AIDS infection is on the rise in the U.S. once again. Ms. Hunter's descriptions bring the realities of HIV / AIDS back into sharp, painful focus. This remains a terminal illness: in the U.S., HIV / AIDS mortality is back on the rise, as many develop complications with / from their medication treatments.

Ms. Hunter's book reminds us that if we do not take action in the areas of disease prevention, education, and access to basic health care, we will face a Holocaust each year as a result of HIV / AIDS. Even in the U.S. where many have access to the medications, HIV / AID has become the leading cause of death among 18-34 year olds, as well as the third leading cause of death AMONG ALL AGE GROUPS in the U.S.

READ THIS BOOK! ... Read more

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THE CHILD IN THE CROWD...
The Emperor's New Clothes on a massive scale - with enormous implications - right under our noses (ongoing in 2002 with no end in sight yet). Any thinking person not yet familiar with the content of this and Duesbergs other books will be grateful to discover them. The public is shown barely the tip of this particular iceberg.
Duesbergs integrity and clarity of mind make him the child in the crowd, but his courage , tenacity and curriculum vitae make him a formidable and feared opponent . His work is terribly important. His herculean efforts go largely unseen due to ruthless media censorship of the subject but the whole picture is available to us in these books and on the internet on Duesbergs and related websites. If you have stumbled across this issue- do a bit of research and prepare to be staggered...... ... Read more