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The African Exchange
Toward a Biological History of Black People
Kenneth F. Kiple
Duke University Press, 1988
David Eltis has observed that "in terms of immigration, America was an extension of Africa rather than Europe until late in the 19th century." The unwilling African immigrants were not spread evenly across the Americas; the overwhelming majority arrived in tropical and subtropical "plantation America" with the result that the disease and nutritional environments of this region also became extensions of Africa. While the implications of disease ecology for world history have been examined, and the details of the "Colombian exchange" of plants and pathogens between Europe and the Americas studied, we have no comparable study of the "African exchange."
The essays in this volume form the cutting edge of biohistorical research that promises to rewrite the story of humankind's past in significant ways.
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Agent Orange
History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty
Edwin A. Martini
University of Massachusetts Press, 2012
Taking on what one former U.S. ambassador called "the last ghost of the Vietnam War," this book examines the far-reaching impact of Agent Orange, the most infamous of the dioxin-contaminated herbicides used by American forces in Southeast Asia. Edwin A. Martini's aim is not simply to reconstruct the history of the "chemical war" but to investigate the ongoing controversy over the short- and long-term effects of weaponized defoliants on the environment of Vietnam, on the civilian population, and on the troops who fought on both sides.

Beginning in the early 1960s, when Agent Orange was first deployed in Vietnam, Martini follows the story across geographical and disciplinary boundaries, looking for answers to a host of still unresolved questions. What did chemical manufacturers and American policymakers know about the effects of dioxin on human beings, and when did they know it? How much do scientists and doctors know even today? Should the use of Agent Orange be considered a form of chemical warfare? What can, and should, be done for U.S. veterans, Vietnamese victims, and others around the world who believe they have medical problems caused by Agent Orange?

Martini draws on military records, government reports, scientific research, visits to contaminated sites, and interviews to disentangle conflicting claims and evaluate often ambiguous evidence. He shows that the impact of Agent Orange has been global in its reach affecting individuals and communities in New Zealand, Australia, Korea, and Canada as well as Vietnam and the United States. Yet for all the answers it provides, this book also reveals how much uncertainty—scientific, medical, legal, and political—continues to surround the legacy of Agent Orange.
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All about Your Eyes
Sharon Fekrat, M.D., FACS and Jennifer S. Weizer, M.D., eds.
Duke University Press, 2005
A concise, easy-to-understand reference book, All about Your Eyes tells you what you need to know to care for your eyes and what to expect from your eye doctor.

In this reliable guide, leading eye care experts:
—explain how healthy eyes work
—describe various eye diseases, including pink eye, cataract, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy
—provide up-to-date information on eye surgery, including refractive, laser, and cosmetic

For each eye problem, the authors describe in simple, straightforward language
—what it is
—the symptoms
—what, if anything, you can do to prevent it
—when to call the doctor
—the treatment
—the likelihood of recovery

All about Your Eyes includes a glossary of technical terms and, following each entry, links to web sites where further information may be found.

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All about Your Eyes, Second Edition, revised and updated
Sharon Fekrat, Tanya S. Glaser, and Henry L. Feng, editors
Duke University Press, 2021
A concise, easy-to-understand reference book, the revised and updated second edition of All about Your Eyes tells you what you need to know to care for your eyes and what to expect from your eye doctor. In this reliable guide, leading eye care experts:
* explain eye anatomy and how healthy eyes work
* describe various eye diseases, including pink eye, cataract, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy
* provide up-to-date information on surgery
For each eye problem, the authors describe in simple, straightforward language:
* what it is
* the symptoms
* what, if anything, you can do to prevent it
* when to call the doctor
* diagnostic tests and treatment
* the likelihood of recovery
All about Your Eyes includes a glossary of technical terms and, following each entry, links to websites where further information may be found.

Contributors. Natalie A. Afshari, MD, Rosanna P. Bahadur, MD, Paramjit K. Bhullar, MD, Faith A. Birnbaum, MD, Cassandra C. Brooks, MD, Pratap Challa, MD, Melissa Mei-Hsia Chan, MBBS, Ravi Chandrashekhar, MD, MSEE, Nathan Cheung, OD, FAAO Claudia S. Cohen, MD, Vincent A. Deramo, MD, Cathy DiBernardo, RN, Laura B. Enyedi, MD, Sharon Fekrat, MD, Henry L. Feng, MD, Brenton D. Finklea, MD, Anna Ginter, MD, Tanya S. Glaser, MD, Michelle Sy Go, MD, MS, Mark Goerlitz-Jessen, MD, Herb Greenman, MD, Abhilash Guduru, MD, Preeya Gupta, MD, Renee Halberg, MSW, LCSW, S. Tammy Hsu, MD, Alessandro Iannaccone, MD, MS, FARVO, Charlene L. James, OD, Kim Jiramongkolchai, MD, Michael P. Kelly, FOPS, Muge R. Kesen, MD, Kirin Khan, MD, Wajiha Jurdi Kheir, MD, Jane S. Kim, MD, Jennifer Lira, MD, Katy C. Liu, MD, PhD, Ramiro S. Maldonado, MD, Ankur Mehra, MD, Priyatham S. Mettu, MD, Prithvi Mruthyunjaya, MD, MHS, Nisha Mukherjee, MD, Kenneth Neufeld, MD, Kristen Peterson, MD, James H. Powers, MD, S. Grace Prakalapakorn, MD, MPH, Michael Quist, MD, Leon Rafailov, MD, Roshni Ranjit-Reeves, MD, Nikolas Raufi, MD, William Raynor, BS, Cason Robbins, BS, Ananth Sastry, MD, Dianna L. Seldomridge, MD, MBA, Terry Semchyshyn, MD, Ann Shue, MD, Julia Song, MD, Brian Stagg, MD, Christopher Sun, MBBS, Anthony Therattil, BS, Daniel S.W. Ting, MBBS, Fay Jobe Tripp, MS, OTR/L, CLVT, CDRS, Obinna Umunakwe, MD, PhD, Lejla Vajzovic, MD, Susan M. Wakil, MD, C. Ellis Wisely, MD, MBA, Julie A. Woodward, MD
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All God's Mistakes
Genetic Counseling in a Pediatric Hospital
Charles L. Bosk
University of Chicago Press, 1992
In one case after another, Charles L. Bosk reveals the process by which parents, physicians and other health professionals come to guide decisions about pregnancies. A story of both extraordinary drama and ordinary routine, this is a pioneering case study of authority and control in a pediatric hospital, showing how genetic counselors work with colleagues and with parents to be, and how they deal with their powerlessness to control life-and-death decisions that they must address.
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Alterity
Jean-Michel Oughourlian
Michigan State University Press, 2023
Through the lens of mimetic theory, distinguished French psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian shows how to spot and address rivalry in our lives and become open to healthier, more genuine relationships. This important study demonstrates the toxic and pathogenic mechanisms at work in physical ailments and mental disturbances and reveals a common cause: alterity, the other. Oughourlian maintains that the real question in attempting to resolve issues of rivalry is not “What is your problem?” but rather “Who is your problem?” This type of discord with the other—be it a friend, colleague, or family member—becomes visible through generalized stress. This stress manifests in psychosomatic symptoms and may even contribute to the development of organic diseases. The most important factor in healing these maladies, then, is to recognize the other with whom we are in rivalry.
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American Disgust
Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
University of Minnesota Press, 2024

Examining the racial underpinnings of food, microbial medicine, and disgust in America

 

American Disgust shows how perceptions of disgust and fears of contamination are rooted in the country’s history of colonialism and racism. Drawing on colonial, corporate, and medical archives, Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer argues that microbial medicine is closely entwined with changing cultural experiences of digestion, excrement, and disgust that are inextricably tied to the creation of whiteness. 

 

Ranging from nineteenth-century colonial encounters with Native people to John Harvey Kellogg’s ideas around civilization and bowel movements to mid-twentieth-century diet and parenting advice books, Wolf-Meyer analyzes how embedded racist histories of digestion and disgust permeate contemporary debates around fecal microbial transplants and other bacteriotherapeutic treatments for gastrointestinal disease.

 

At its core, American Disgust wrestles with how changing cultural notions of digestion—what goes into the body and what comes out of it—create and impose racial categories motivated by feelings of disgust rooted in American settler-colonial racism. It shows how disgust is a changing, yet fundamental, aspect of American subjectivity and that engaging with it—personally, politically, and theoretically—opens up possibilities for conceptualizing health at the individual, societal, and planetary levels.

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American Sunshine
Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light
Daniel Freund
University of Chicago Press, 2012

In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis.

In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund  tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth century.  Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America’s new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health. and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.

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Arresting Contagion
Science, Policy, and Conflicts over Animal Disease Control
Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode
Harvard University Press, 2015

Over sixty percent of all infectious human diseases, including tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, and hundreds more, are shared with other vertebrate animals. Arresting Contagion tells the story of how early efforts to combat livestock infections turned the United States from a disease-prone nation into a world leader in controlling communicable diseases. Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode show that many innovations devised in the fight against animal diseases, ranging from border control and food inspection to drug regulations and the creation of federal research labs, provided the foundation for modern food safety programs and remain at the heart of U.S. public health policy.

America’s first concerted effort to control livestock diseases dates to the founding of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) in 1884. Because the BAI represented a milestone in federal regulation of commerce and industry, the agency encountered major jurisdictional and constitutional obstacles. Nevertheless, it proved effective in halting the spread of diseases, counting among its early breakthroughs the discovery of Salmonella and advances in the understanding of vector-borne diseases.

By the 1940s, government policies had eliminated several major animal diseases, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and establishing a model for eradication that would be used around the world. Although scientific advances played a key role, government interventions did as well. Today, a dominant economic ideology frowns on government regulation of the economy, but the authors argue that in this case it was an essential force for good.

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Articulations
The Body and Illness in Poetry
Jon Mukand
University of Iowa Press, 1994

In 1987 poet and physician Jon Mukand published Sutured Words, a volume of contemporary poems to help patients, their families and friends, and all health care professionals embrace the complexity of healing, illness, and death. Robert Coles called the collection “a wonderful source of inspiration and instruction for any of us who are trying to figure out what our work means”; Norman Cousins was impressed by the “discernment and high quality of the selections.” Now, in Articulations, Mukand adds more than a hundred new poems to the strongest poems from Sutured Words to give us a lyrical, enlightened understanding of the human dimensions of suffering and illness

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Assessment of Chronic Pain Patients with the MMPI-2
Laura S. Keller
University of Minnesota Press, 1991
Supplies clinicians with data on the applicability of previous MMPI chronic pain research to the revised version of the test.
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