
New Books in Medicine
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Top 10 New Books in Medicine Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best New Books in Medicine episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to New Books in Medicine for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite New Books in Medicine episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Alison M. Downham Moore, "The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing" (Oxford UP, 2022)
New Books in Medicine
02/14/24 • 45 min
In The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2022), Alison Downham Moore discusses her contribution to the history of women's ageing. Doctors writing about menopause in France vastly outnumbered those in other cultures throughout the entire nineteenth century. The concept of menopause was invented by French male medical students in the aftermath of the French Revolution, becoming an important pedagogic topic and a common theme of doctors' professional identities in postrevolutionary biomedicine. Older women were identified as an important patient cohort for the expanding medicalisation of French society and were advised to entrust themselves to the hygienic care of doctors in managing the whole era of life from around and after the final cessation of menses. However, menopause owed much of its conceptual weft to earlier themes of women as the sicker sex, of vitalist crisis, of the vapours, and of astrological climacteric years.
This is the first comprehensive study of the origins of the medical concept of menopause, richly contextualising its role in nineteenth-century French medicine and revealing the complex threads of meaning that informed its invention. It tells a complex story of how women's ageing featured in the demographic revolution in modern science, in the denigration of folk medicine, in the unique French field of hygiène, and in the fixation on women in the emergence of modern psychiatry. It reveals the nineteenth-century French origins of the still-current medical and alternative-health approaches to women's ageing as something to be managed through gynaecological surgery, hormonal replacement, and lifestyle intervention.
Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.
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Elizabeth Aislinn O'Brien, "Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940" (UNC Press, 2023)
New Books in Medicine
07/05/24 • 53 min
In Surgery & Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Elizabeth O’Brien foregrounds the racial and religious meanings of surgery to draw important connections between historical and contemporary politics regarding fetal and maternal healthcare. She traces practices of caesarean section and coercive Christianization throughout Mexico’s colonial period; patriarchal pregnancy management during republican state formation; and tubal ligation and vaginal bifurcation in Mexico’s twentieth century Eugenics movement. Surgery and Salvation has received several awards including the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies’ Judy Ewell Award; the Latin American Studies Association 2024 Best Book Award for the Nineteenth-Century Section; and Honorable Mention for the 2024 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize (WAWH) as well as the Thomas McGann Prize (RMCLAS). O’Brien is an Assistant Professor of the History of Medicine and Latin American History at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this episode, O'Brien is interviewed by Leah Cargin (PhD candidate, University of Oklahoma).
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Sam Kean, “The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons” (Little, Brown and Co., 2015)
New Books in Medicine
04/26/18 • 58 min
Early studies of the functions of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike—strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, lobotomies, horrendous accidents-and see how the victim coped. In many cases survival was miraculous, and observers could only marvel at the transformations that took place afterward, altering victims’ personalities. An injury to one section can leave a person unable to recognize loved ones; some brain trauma can even make you a pathological gambler, pedophile, or liar. But the book The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery (Back Bay Books, 2015) explains how a few scientists realized that these injuries were an opportunity for studying brain function at its extremes. With lucid explanations and incisive wit, Sam Kean explains the brain’s secret passageways while recounting forgotten stories of common people whose struggles, resiliency, and deep humanity made modern neuroscience possible.
Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jeremy is curious and passionate about all things healthcare, which means he’s always up for a good discussion! Reach him at [email protected].
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Londa Schiebinger, “Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World” (Stanford UP, 2017)
New Books in Medicine
06/27/18 • 42 min
Londa Schiebinger‘s new book Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford University Press, 2017) examines the contexts, programs, and ethics of medical experimentation in the British and French West Indies from the 1760s to the early 19th century. Physicians were enlisted into the plantation systems to ensure the greatest profitability of the enslaved workforces. European practices, however, were ill-equipped for the tropics, and so many looked towards the knowledge of enslaved populations for effective remedies. Schiebinger analyses the circuits and structures of this knowledge exchange within the sugar plantation complex and between these islands and Europe. She brilliantly illuminates how and why some practices were adopted and appropriated, why others were prohibited, and how the colonial crucible so often resulted in the loss of vibrant medical traditions and knowledge.
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Rohit Khanna, "Misunderstanding Health: Making Sense of America's Broken Health Care System" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
New Books in Medicine
08/24/21 • 36 min
With technological advances and information sharing so prevalent, health care should be more transparent and easier to access than ever before. So why does it seem like everything about it―from pricing, drug development, and the emergence of new diseases to the intricacies of biologic and precision medicine therapies―is becoming more complex, not less?
Rohit Khanna's Misunderstanding Health: Making Sense of America's Broken Health Care System (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) examines some of today's most revealing health care trends while imploring us to look at these issues with alacrity, humor, and vigilance. Over the course of eighteen short, engaging chapters, Khanna explains
• how unexamined beliefs can endanger patients, drive cost, and increase bureaucracy
• the "Dr. Google" effect on the ways that we seek (or eschew) care
• why our health care costs more than in any other country
• the unintended consequences of using rating sites like Yelp
• what we can learn about health care from hurricanes
• how social media influencers impact health care
• how artificial intelligence can improve health care
• why health screening programs are so complicated
• what the industry is doing to combat health care fraud
• what the big deal about legalizing medical cannabis is
• how to think about behavioral "nudges" designed to improve health
• why understanding how data are collected is critical to understanding what they can tell us
• and much more
Each provocative and easy-to-read chapter covers a familiar aspect of health care in a clear and succinct way. Offering inquisitive readers a warts-and-all view of American health care, Misunderstanding Health is the book that you'll want to read if you know enough to be frustrated by the system but want a deeper dive into its challenges and opportunities.
Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.
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Arthur Kleinman, "Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine" (U California Press, 1997)
New Books in Medicine
03/01/23 • 32 min
One of the most influential and creative scholars in medical anthropology takes stock of his recent intellectual odysseys in this collection of essays. Arthur Kleinman, an anthropologist and psychiatrist who has studied in Taiwan, China, and North America since 1968, draws upon his bicultural, multidisciplinary background to propose alternative strategies for thinking about how, in the postmodern world, the social and medical relate.
Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine (U California Press, 1997). explores the border between medical and social problems, the boundary between health and social change. Kleinman studies the body as the mediator between individual and collective experience, finding that many health problems—for example the trauma of violence or depression in the course of chronic pain—are less individual medical problems than interpersonal experiences of social suffering. He argues for an ethnographic approach to moral practice in medicine, one that embraces the infrapolitical context of illness, the responses to it, the social institutions relating to it, and the way it is configured in medical ethics. Previously published in various journals, these essays have been revised, updated, and brought together with an introduction, an essay on violence and the politics of post-traumatic stress disorder, and a new chapter that examines the contemporary ethnographic literature of medical anthropology.
A copy of the transcript can be found here
Show notes:
--World Mental Health: Problems and Priorities in Low-Income Countries
--The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine
--Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan
--The Tanner Lecture at Stanford
Shu Cao Mo, Ed.M. can be reached at [email protected].
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Theodore Dalrymple is a retired physician in Great Britain, who has written an account of his year’s-worth of reading the New England Journal of Medicine. In his new book False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine (Encounter Books, 2019), he recounts each week’s new edition of the Journal with an eye toward analytical errors and a culture of political correctness in regard to the handling of medical and public health issues. Dalrymple notes how the medical community must put a significant degree of faith in the reliability of such publications, especially due to the scarcity of time that most practicing physicians have to dedicate to scrutinizing articles. But he warns that some publications often contain basic mistakes, such as the failure to understand that correlation is not causation. He is also concerned with the prevalence of political correctness concerning health issues and how they can affect the public’s understanding of these issues.
Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory.
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David Sinclair, "LifeSpan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
New Books in Medicine
10/04/19 • 60 min
Today's guest is David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul Glenn Center Biological Mechanisms of Aging. He is widely considered on the world's foremost experts on longevity research. A co-founder of the journal Aging and several biotech companies, he also hold 35 patents. Dr. Sinclair is a recipient of more than 25 awards and honors, including being knighted in the Order of Australia. His work is featured in five books, two documentary movies, “60 Minutes,” Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole,” and other media. His newest book, LifeSpan. Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To, was released in September 2019 by Simon and Schuster.
Colin Miller and Dr. Keith Mankin host the popular medical podcast, PeerSpectrum. Colin works in the medical device space and Keith is a retired pediatric orthopedic surgeon.
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Katie Batza, "Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
New Books in Medicine
07/15/19 • 33 min
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s looms large in recent histories of sexuality, medicine, and politics, and justly so—an unknown virus without a cure ravages an already persecuted minority, medical professionals are unprepared and sometimes unwilling to care for the sick, and a national health bureaucracy is slow to invest resources in finding a cure. Yet this widely accepted narrative, while accurate, creates the impression that the gay community lacked any capacity to address AIDS. In fact, as Katie Batza demonstrates in this path-breaking book, there was already a well-developed network of gay-health clinics in American cities when the epidemic struck, and these clinics served as the first responders to the disease. Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) explores this heretofore unrecognized story, chronicling the development of a national gay health network by highlighting the origins of longstanding gay health institutions in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, placing them in a larger political context, and following them into the first five years of the AIDS crisis.
Like many other minority communities in the 1970s, gay men faced public health challenges that resulted as much from their political marginalization and social stigmatization as from any disease. Gay men mistrusted mainstream health institutions, fearing outing, ostracism, misdiagnosis, and the possibility that their sexuality itself would be treated as a medical condition. In response to these problems, a colorful cast of doctors and activists built a largely self-sufficient gay medical system that challenged, collaborated with, and educated mainstream health practitioners. Taking inspiration from rhetoric employed by the Black Panther, feminist, and anti-urban renewal movements, and putting government funding to new and often unintended uses, gay health activists of the 1970s changed the medical and political understandings of sexuality and health to reflect the new realities of their own sexual revolution.
Stephen Colbrook is a graduate student at the University College London, where he is researching a dissertation on the interaction between HIV/AIDS and state policy-making. This work will focus on the political and policy-making side of the epidemic and aims to compare the different contexts of individual states, such as California, Florida, and New Jersey. Stephen can be contacted at [email protected].
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Halee Fischer-Wright, “Back to Balance: The Art, Science, and Business of Medicine” (Disruption Books, 2017)
New Books in Medicine
04/05/18 • 56 min
In this highly engaging, thoroughly persuasive book, Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright presents a unique prescription for fixing America’s health care woes, based on her thirty years of experience as a physician and industry leader. The problem, Fischer-Wright asserts, is that we have lost our focus on strengthening the one thing that has always been at the heart of effective health care: namely, strong relationships between patients and physicians, informed by smart science and enabled by good business, that create the trust necessary to achieve the outcomes we all want. Drawing from personal stories and examples from popular culture, supported by scientific studies and rock-solid logic, Back to Balance: The Art, Science, and Business of Medicine (Disruption Books, 2017) shows how the business and science of medicine are combining to strangle the creative, compassionate, human side of medicine—what Dr. Fischer-Wright calls the “art of medicine.” She then details the three questions necessary to guide us toward true solutions and the five paradigm shifts crucial to bring the art, science, and business of medicine back to balance. . . before it’s too late. Irreverent and funny, steeped in storytelling but allergic to policy-speak, this is a wholly new brand of health care book—one that makes common sense transformational and that will appeal to anyone who has experienced the tribulations and indignities of American health care.
Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jeremy is curious and passionate about all things healthcare, which means he’s always up for a good discussion! Reach him at [email protected].
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FAQ
How many episodes does New Books in Medicine have?
New Books in Medicine currently has 1042 episodes available.
What topics does New Books in Medicine cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts and Science.
What is the most popular episode on New Books in Medicine?
The episode title 'David Sinclair, "LifeSpan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on New Books in Medicine?
The average episode length on New Books in Medicine is 56 minutes.
How often are episodes of New Books in Medicine released?
Episodes of New Books in Medicine are typically released every 2 days.
When was the first episode of New Books in Medicine?
The first episode of New Books in Medicine was released on Aug 15, 2008.
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