General All books
Pierre Gascar
A Look at the Home of Monsieur Pasteur
The spirit which inspired Pasteur's work is kept alive by the Institut Pasteur in Paris. From the discovery of the rabies virus and vaccine, to the Nobel Prize winning work of the Paris school of molecular biology, P. Gascar traces the history of an institution which has formed some of the finest biological minds of the century.
Alexandre Minkowski
The Art of Giving Birth
How are children born today in different cultures? At once a history of birth throughout the ages and a comprehensive medical anthropology, this book constitutes a rigorous overview and breakdown of our current knowledge in the fields of foetal biology and neonatal medicine. As a professor and the director of a research laboratory at Port-Royal, Alexandre Minkowski has dedicated his life's work to the medical and scientific study of the foetus.
Jean Bernard
About a Man
A sixty year battle against childhood leukemia. Life, the career of a renowned haematologist who contributed to the renaissance of medical research in France and participated in one of the greatest scientific ventures of this century: the exploration of blood. With humour and wisdom J. Bernard gives the testimony of a great humanist of our time.
Philippe Lazar
The Health Explorers Voyage to the Centre of Medical Research
Research is a keystone of modern medicine, and is a critical factor in the independence of the nation, and yet medical research is still not well-known to the general public. How do researchers work? How is research organized in France? What are the links between the various public players and researchers? Since 1982, Philippe Lazar has been director-general of the French National Health and Medical Research Institute.
Paul Milliez
My Hopes
How does a traditionally-educated Catholic become a committed doctor? How do the resistance, the fight for abortion and against all forms of intolerance, intimate relationships with world leaders from General de Gaulle to the Shah of Iran and travels from Liban to Saudi Arabia, combine to create an extraordinary personality? A worldwide specialist in arterial hypertension, Paul Milliez (1912-1994) was the honorary dean of faculty at Broussais Hotel-Dieu.
Jean-Paul Binet
The Surgical Procedure
One of the great names in cardiovascular surgery, Jean-Paul Binet, wished to embrace his discipline it its generality (working with hands) but also in showing its prodigious diversity, progress and transformations. The reader is invited to follow him, and in so doing to surpass the mixed sentiments of fascination and horror that are often inspired by this branch of medicine. Jean-Paul Binet is a member of the Medical and Surgical Academies, and a correspondent for the Academie des Sciences. He practices at the Marie-Lannelongue Surgical Center.
Étienne-Émile Baulieu
The Generation of the Pill
After meeting Gregory Pincus, the inventor of the pill, E. Baulieu, a young researcher and hormone specialist, found himself at the heart of one of society s most burning controversies: contraception. This is his story; his own contribution to contraception, RU 486, the first contragestive pill, and his reflections on the ethical debate it provoked.
Jean Hamburger
Beautiful Imprudences
"Man has broken all the commandments to which living beings are bound. We had the audacity to want the weak to be protected. We gave rights to the individual. We decreased the rate of infant mortality and doubled the rate of life expectancy. But can we avoid the punishments of these beautiful imprudences?" Jean Hamburger Jean Hamburger was at the forefront of modern necrology and the principals of medical resuscitation. A member of the Académie Française and the Académie de Médecine, he was also President of the Académie des Sciences.
Jean-Marie Besson
Pain
Pain. Doctors and researchers have long sought its origin.In this fascinating essay, well-known neurophysiologist J.-M. Besson explains what pain is and how to combat it. He examines acupuncture, various placebos, and recounts the current search for an ideal analgesic, one containing the power of morphine without its negative side effects.
Jean Bernard
The Hopes and Modesty of Medicine
It is possible to predict the medical science of the twenty-first century. This book attempts to describe its essential traits. It will be inspired by two sentiments: hope and modesty. Hope that the misfortune of man will diminish thanks to the progress of medicine. A doubled modesty before the perverse effects of progress and the repercussions of unpredicted events.
Luc Montagnier
Viruses and Man
Luc Montagnier is the person who, with his team of the Pasteur Institute, discovered in 1983 the virus responsible for AIDS. He tells about the research work which led him to this discovery. He sums up the knowledge we have of this virus, its origin and the way the disease develops. He gives the state of research today and his hopes.
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.
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.
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.
Julien Cohen-Solal
Cinq sous de glace Fifty Years of Pediatrics
Julien Cohen-Solal has made some of the greatest progress over the past several decades in France in understanding the needs of young children. After many of his books have become classics in the field and served as landmarks to many families, Cohen-Solal tells today of his childhood and adolescence in Algeria during the 30s and 40s, of his discovery of the Parisian post-war medical world, of the influences and discoveries that punctuated his education, and of relationships with parents and children that were important to him. Now is the occassion to celebrate fifty years of pediatrics in France, fifty years of scientific, clinical, and psychological advances.