Medicine All books
Petr Skrabanek
The End of Humanitarian Medicine
Medicine is at a crossroads. Traditionally, practitioners helped patients who came to them looking for support, for something to alleviate their suffering. However, the progress which has been accomplished in the last few decades has changed everything. Doctors now claim to be fighting death itself, they believe medicine to have almost limitless powers, and they try to prevent illness by changing behaviour. From this point onwards, our entire existence becomes overmedicalized. In the name of health at any price, doctors now dictate, prescribe and legislate whilst forgetting the essential meaning of their job : to help and to care. A violent criticism of contemporary medicine.
Michael S. Gazzaniga
The Social Brain
This book investigates the concepts of the "right brain" and the "left brain". According to the author the brain is most certainly made up of relatively autonomous modules which react independantly to environmental pressures. At least one of the modules, situated on the left side of the brain, is responsible for the interpretation of answers which may be contradictory with others, whereas yet another module on the same side translates into words the result of this interpretation. So, instead of being a unique, monolithic system that we imagined, the brain would appear to be a collectivity of systems - a social brain. This approach enlightens us as to the functioning of the human brain, and according to Gazzaniga, affects the very roots of our belief systems and societies. Renowned American neurologist, Michael Gazzaniga is Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of Cornell University and chairman of Neuropsychology.
Jean-François Mattei
The Rights of Life
Medically assisted procreation, prenatal diagnostic, organ transplants, genetic testing : all are part of the spectacular progress characteristic of scientific and medical research in the last few years. These new techniques confront us with totally new situations and oblige us to take responsabilities and make difficult choices. Should we do these things just because we can ? Who should decide what to do and on what criteria ? The individual or society ? Doctors or politicians ? This book invites us into a stimulating and incisive thought process concerning the future of medicine.
René Frydman
God, Medicine and the Embryo
With ethical questions raised about medically assisted pregnancies and medical experimentation, the eugenics debate has become a mute point. Yet bioethical legislation has remained ambiguous. René Frydman has made himself the ardent defender of progenics, a predictive and humanistic medicine. Here, Frydman reflects on the problem of the human embryo through the different points of view of science, religion, law, and morality, and answers ethical and religious questions that he has been asked by his patients. René Frydman is a gynecologist-obstetrician and a member of the FrenchEthics Committee.
René Frydman, Myriam Szejer
The Baby Through All Stages of Development Gypsy II Conference
Can communication be established with new-born infants? Is it true that certain forms of sensory information can be transmitted to foetuses? How can doctors detect medical disorders which are the expression of psychic suffering in infancy? Can psychoanalysis help to relieve such disorders? To produce this report, paediatricians, midwives, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and researchers pooled their experience to provide a better understanding of what makes human beings develop harmoniously. The Gypsy II Conference was held in association with the organisation known as "La Cause des Bébés".
Jean Dausset
A Nod in the Direction of Life The Great HLA Adventure
Jean Daussets finding that white blood cells play an active role in immunization won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine and opened a new area of biological investigation, both in pure and in applied research. The HLA system harbours a unique peptide which may be regarded as the essence of the self in opposition to everything else much as the pineal gland was regarded as the seat of the soul by Descartes. The distinction between the self and the non-self is an essential one in immunology where an individuals defensive system must fight off foreign bodies while at the same time defending his or her own system. In his book, Jean Dausset recounts the story of his discovery and introduces the reader to other fascinating aspects of his life and work.
Bernard Roques
The Danger of Drugs
This book is the result of a study on drugs carried out by Bernard Roques at the request of the French Secretary of State for Health, Bernard Kouchner. The author has reviewed and summarised a large body of information from all over the world, so this is a thorough, detailed scientific examination of what is known today of the potential dangers, particularly for the brain, of toxic and psychotropic drugs including alcohol and tobacco which are often associated with the consumption of other drugs. Roques study will doubtless play a major role in public health discussions and decisions, particularly in the fight against alcoholism and nicotine addiction. Bernard Roques is a member of the French Académie des Sciences.
Jacques Rogé
Nietzsche's Syndrome
Nietzsche was a manic-depressive. This is the conclusion that one doctor, Professor Jacques Rogé has come to after reading the works of the great philosopher, in particular his autobiographical texts. In light of this diagnosis, he explains why the author of Joyful Wisdom continuously oscillated between periods of creative exultation and periods of melancholic depression. In particular, he draws out the essential role that this illness played in the explosion of Nietzsches genius.
Maurice Tubiana
Education and Life
This book is a reflection on the alarming fact that France has the highest level of violent deaths (from suicide, drugs, and road accidents) in all Europe among young people between 18 and 22 years old. Tubiana analyses the pleasure principle which runs through our culture and our values, the Freudian principle that demands the immediate satisfaction of our impulses. This brings him to denounce postmodern individualism which does not make any room for the collective interest. Maurice Tubiana is a world-reknowned oncologist and member of the French Academy of Science and the Academy of Medicine.
Denis Vincent
Asthma
"This little book will help demystify an illness that can be highly stressful; it should also encourage an easier form of dialogue with the patient's doctor." Impact Médecin
Pierre Pollak
Parkinson's Disease
There are many aspects of this disease : How does it operate and what causes it ? When does the trembling start ? What are the other symptoms ? What are the newest available treatments ? What can be done when medicines are no longer effective ? What about brain surgery ? Will it be possible one day to perform brain transplants ? With regard to the daily life of a patient suffering from Parkinsons Disease, what are the benefits of gymnastics and massages ? Is it still possible to drive ? Or hold down a job ? What is the best attitude for the people around the patient to adopt ? Pierre Pollak teaches neurology at the University Hospital of Grenoble.
William C. Dement, Christopher Vaughan
How to have a good night's sleep
For more than forty years, William Dement has been researching the subject of sleep and of sleep-related problems. According to Dement, if we dont sleep well, we cannot be healthy; but its impossible to sleep well if we dont know what disturbs our sleep patterns, or what we stand to gain from an adequate nights rest. We are careful about our diets and we make sure we get enough exercise. Yet we often forget that it is equally important to sleep well. Sleep is often sacrificed to the demands of our daily lives. Doctors still tend to minimise the physical, emotional and psychological risks that result from a failure to give sleep its due. This fundamental work by a world-renowned specialist enables us to find out how we should sleep, in order to feel better and keep healthy. William C. Dement is a world authority in the field of sleep and in the treatment of sleep disturbances. In the 1970s, he founded one of the earliest centres specialising in the study of sleep at Stanford University, in California. He continues to teach at Stanford. Christopher Vaughan is the author of How Life Begins : The Science of Life in the Womb.