332 books match the query 'Health & Fitness' and 17 start with m

cover of Malicious Intent: Murder and the Perpetuation of Jim Crow Health Care

Malicious Intent

Murder and the Perpetuation of Jim Crow Health Care

David Barton Smith

Vanderbilt University Press, 2023

“Do we want to perpetuate a Jim Crow health system?” A brilliant, idealistic physician named Jean Cowsert asked that question in Alabama in 1966. Her answer was no—and soon after, she died under suspicious circumstances. Unearthing the truth of Cowsert’s life and death is a central concern of David Barton Smith’s Malicious Intent. Unearthing the grim history of our health care system is another.

Race-related disparities in American death rates, exacerbated once again by the COVID-19 pandemic, have persisted since the birth of the modern US medical system a century ago. A unique but perpetually unequal history has prevented the United States from providing the kind of health care assurances that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations. The underlying story is one of political, medical, and bureaucratic machinations, all motivated by a deliberate Jim Crow systemic design. In Malicious Intent, David Barton Smith traces the Jean Cowsert story and the cold case of her death as a through line to explain the construction and fulfillment of an unequal health care system that would rather sacrifice many than provide for Black Americans.

Cowsert’s suspicious death came at a key moment in the struggle for universal health care in the wealthiest country on earth. Malicious Intent is a history of those failed efforts and a story of selective amnesia about one doctor’s death and the movement she fought for.
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cover of Mammographies: The Cultural Discourses of Breast Cancer Narratives

Mammographies

The Cultural Discourses of Breast Cancer Narratives

Mary K. DeShazer

University of Michigan Press, 2015

While breast cancer continues to affect the lives of millions, contemporary writers and artists have responded to the ravages of the disease in creative expression. Mary K. DeShazer’s book looks specifically at breast cancer memoirs and photographic narratives, a category she refers to as mammographies, signifying both the imaging technology by which most Western women discover they have this disease and the documentary imperatives that drive their written and visual accounts of it. Mammographies argues that breast cancer narratives of the past ten years differ from their predecessors in their bold address of previously neglected topics such as the link between cancer and environmental carcinogens, the ethics and efficacy of genetic testing and prophylactic mastectomy, and the shifting politics of prosthesis and reconstruction.

Mammographies is distinctive among studies of contemporary illness narratives in its exclusive focus on breast cancer, its analysis of both memoirs and photographic texts, its attention to hybrid and collaborative narratives, and its emphasis on ecological, genetic, transnational, queer, and anti-pink discourses. DeShazer’s methodology—best characterized as literary critical, feminist, and interdisciplinary—includes detailed interpretation of the narrative strategies, thematic contours, and visual imagery of a wide range of contemporary breast cancer memoirs and photographic anthologies. The author explores the ways in which the narratives constitute a distinctive testimonial and memorial tradition, a claim supported by close readings and theoretical analysis that demonstrates how these narratives question hegemonic cultural discourses, empower reader-viewers as empathic witnesses, and provide communal sites for mourning, resisting, and remembering.

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cover of Mammography Wars: Analyzing Attention in Cultural and Medical Disputes

Mammography Wars

Analyzing Attention in Cultural and Medical Disputes

Asia Friedman

Rutgers University Press, 2023

Winner of the 2024 Outstanding Book Award, Social Problems Theory Division, Society for the Study of Social Problems

Mammography is a routine health screening performed forty million times each year in the United States, yet it remains one of the most deeply contested topics in medicine, with national health care organizations supporting conflicting guidelines. In Mammography Wars, sociologist Asia Friedman examines cultural and medical disagreements over mammography. At issue is whether to screen women under age fifty, which is rooted in deeper questions about early detection and the assumed linear and progressive development of breast cancer. Based on interviews with doctors and scientists, interviews with women ages 40 to 50, and newspaper coverage of mammography, Friedman uses the sociology of attention to map the cognitive structure of the “mammography wars,” offering insights into the entrenched nature of debates over mammography that often get missed when applying a medical lens. Friedman’s analysis also suggests the sociology of attention’s unique potential for analyzing cultural conflicts beyond mammography, and even beyond medicine.
 
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cover of Man-Made Medicine: Women’s Health, Public Policy, and Reform

Man-Made Medicine

Women’s Health, Public Policy, and Reform

Kary L. Moss, ed.

Duke University Press, 1996

If not for the reproductive functions of women, would there be anything called women’s health care? A review of medical literature, practice, and policy in this country would suggest that the answer is no. Offering a startling view of the current state of health care for women in the United States and laying the foundation for a new, widely defined women’s medicine, Man-Made Medicine makes an urgent statement about gender bias in the medical establishment and its pernicious effects on the well-being of women and the care they receive.
These essays by physicians, lawyers, activists, and scholars present a rare interdisciplinary approach to a complex set of issues. Gender stereotyping and bias in the collection, analysis, and reporting of scientific data and in the ways health-related news is covered by the media are examined. The exclusion of women from the health care policy-making process and the effect such exclusion has on the determination of priorities among potential areas of research are also explored. With discussions of the plight of specific populations of women whose health care needs are not being sufficiently met—for example, immigrants, prisoners, the mentally ill, or women with HIV/AIDS, disabilities, or reproductive health problems—this book considers matters of race and class within the parameters of gender as it builds a fundamental challenge to the existing health care system. A range of current reform proposals are also evaluated in terms of their potential impact on women.
Suggesting no less than a radical rethinking of women’s medicine, Man-Made Medicine gives essential direction to the discussions that will shape the future of health care in this country. It will be of great interest to a wide audience, including health care advocates, policymakers, scholars, and readers generally concerned with women’s health issues.

Contributors. Ellen Barry, Laurie Beck, Joan Bertin, Janet Calvo, Wendy Chavkin, Kay Dickersin, Abigail English, Elizabeth Fee, Carol Gill, Nancy Krieger, Joyce McConnell, Judy Norsigian, Ann Scales, Susan Stefan, Lauren Schnaper, Catherine Teare

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cover of Management of Smallpox Eradication in India

Management of Smallpox Eradication in India

Lawrence B. Brilliant

University of Michigan Press, 2025

Doctor Lawrence Brilliant and Doctor Isao Arita, Chief, Smallpox Eradication Programme, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, visited West Bengal during the autumn of 1973 in order to initiate the first trial of the smallpox eradication program, namely, a statewide search for hidden cases in a population of sixty million. Eighteen months of intensive work produced a final result of the recording of the last smallpox case in India; the date of onset of rash was May 24, 1975. No more cases have been detected.
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cover of Managing Sickle Cell Disease: In Low-Income Families

Managing Sickle Cell Disease

In Low-Income Families

Shirley A. Hill

Temple University Press, 2003

As many as 30,000 African Americans have sickle cell disease (SCD). Though the political activism of the 1960s and a major 1970s health campaign spurred demands for testing, treatment, and education programs, little attention has been given to how families cope with SCD. This first study to give SCD a social, economic, and cultural context documents the daily lives of families living with this threatening illness. Specifically, Shirley A. Hill examines how low-income African American mothers with children suffering from this hereditary, incurable, and chronically painful disease, react to the diagnosis and manage their family's health care.The 23 mostly single mothers Hill studies survive in an inner-city world of social inequality. Despite limited means, they actively participate, create, and define the social world they live in, their reality shaped by day-to-day caregiving. These women overcome obstacles by utilizing such viable alternatives as sharing child care with relatives within established kinship networks.Highlighting the role of class, race, and gender in the illness experience, Hill interprets how these women reject, redefine, or modify the objective scientific facts about SCD. She acknowledges and explains the relevance of child-bearing and motherhood to African American women's identity, revealing how the revelation of the SCD trait or the diagnosis of one child often does not affect a woman's interpretation of her reproductive rights.
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cover of Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity

Marketing Nutrition

Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity

Brian Wansink

University of Illinois Press, 2007

Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously can promote better health, most efforts by companies, health professionals, and even parents are disappointingly ineffective. Consumer confusion has lead to floundering sales for soy foods; embarrassing results for expensive Five-a-Day for Better Health programs; and uneaten mountains of vegetables at homes and in school cafeterias. Brian Wansink's Marketing Nutrition focuses on why people eat the foods they do, and what can be done to improve their nutrition. Wansink argues that the true challenge in marketing nutrition lies in leveraging new tools of consumer psychology (which he specifically demonstrates) and by applying lessons from other products' failures and successes. The same tools and insights that have helped make less nutritious products popular also offer the best opportunity to reintroduce a nutritious lifestyle. The key problem with marketing nutrition remains, after all, marketing.
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cover of Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case: A Documentary History

Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case

A Documentary History

Jason Emerson

University of Illinois Press, 2012

In 1875 Mary Lincoln, the widow of a revered president, was committed to an insane asylum by her son, Robert. The trial that preceded her internment was a subject of keen national interest. The focus of public attention since Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, Mary Lincoln had attracted plentiful criticism and visible scorn from much of the public, who perceived her as spoiled, a spendthrift, and even too much of a Southern sympathizer. Widespread scrutiny only increased following her husband's assassination in 1865 and her son Tad's death six years later, after which her overwhelming grief led to the increasingly erratic behavior that led to her being committed to a sanitarium. A second trial a year later resulted in her release, but the stigma of insanity stuck. In the years since, questions emerged with new force, as the populace and historians debated whether she had been truly insane and subsequently cured, or if she was the victim of family maneuvering.

In this volume, noted Lincoln scholar Jason Emerson provides a documentary history of Mary Lincoln's mental illness and insanity case, evenhandedly presenting every possible primary source on the subject to enable a clearer view of the facts. Beginning with documents from the immediate aftermath of her husband's assassination and ending with reminiscences by friends and family in the mid-twentieth century, Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case: A Documentary History compiles more than one hundred letters, dozens of newspaper articles, editorials, and legal documents, and the daily patient progress reports from Bellevue Place Sanitarium during Mary Lincoln's incarceration. Including many materials that have never been previously published, Emerson also collects multiple reminiscences, interviews, and diaries of people who knew Mary Lincoln or were involved in the case, including the first-hand recollection of one of the jurors in the 1875 insanity trial.

Suggesting neither accusation nor exoneration of the embattled First Lady, Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case: A Documentary History gives scholars and history enthusiasts incomparable access to the documents and information crucial to understanding this vexing chapter in American history.

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cover of Measuring Mamma's Milk: Fascism and the Medicalization of Maternity in Italy

Measuring Mamma's Milk

Fascism and the Medicalization of Maternity in Italy

Elizabeth Dixon Whitaker

University of Michigan Press, 2000

In Italy as in other Western societies, the medicalization of basic biological functions contributes to the loss of personal confidence in the care of the body. Measuring Mamma's Milk analyzes the medicalization of maternity through a study of breastfeeding practices over a century of changes in socioeconomic organization, family life, and health beliefs. During the pivotal interwar period in Italy, fascism changed the relationship between the state and the public and greatly tightened the state's ties with medicine and science. "Rationalized" breastfeeding was at the heart of programs to reduce infant mortality rates in order to increase the size and "quality" of the population. Highly regimented feeding schedules, still practiced today, came to represent both an eternal, natural function and the conquest of fatal maternal ignorance by modern science. They also had important consequences for fertility and for maternal and child health. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Elizabeth Whitaker shows how fascism went beneath the surface to have a lasting impact on cultural beliefs and behaviors. Measuring Mamma's Milk will appeal to readers interested in Italy, fascism, and the care of young children as well as to scholars in medical and cultural anthropology, European history, history of medicine, and women's studies. Elizabeth Dixon Whitaker received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Emory University. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the second of which sent her to the University of Bologna as a Senior Scholar in 1998-99. She is currently an independent scholar living in Washington, D.C.
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cover of Medieval Wellness: From Beauty to Bloodletting

Medieval Wellness

From Beauty to Bloodletting

Larisa Grollemond

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 0

Dispelling myths of a dirty, superstitious Middle Ages, this entertaining volume explores medieval approaches to health and wellness.

Often maligned as an era of darkness and superstition, the Middle Ages in Europe have been stereotyped as lacking standards for basic hygiene, or, at the very least, for having a laughably simplistic approach to self-care and medicine. With wit and expert analysis, medievalist Larisa Grollemond explores everyday practices and beliefs of medieval life. She uncovers a world as nuanced and self-aware as our own while playfully connecting traditions from the Middle Ages to modern wellness culture.

  • Challenges misconceptions of medieval Europe with engaging, evidence-based insights into hygiene and healthcare practices.
  • Answers popular questions about daily life, including bathing, cosmetics, contraception, and the realities of medieval medical treatments.
  • Features over 130 illustrations of illuminated manuscripts, medieval artifacts, and other art works that bring the past vividly to life.
  • Connects medieval wellness practices to contemporary self-care trends, offering surprising parallels and fresh perspective.

If you think the Middle Ages were primitive and unsophisticated, this book will change your mind. With Medieval Wellness, you’ll discover a world of care, curiosity, and complexity that will feel familiar to your own.

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cover of Mental Health Disorders in Adolescents: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Professionals

Mental Health Disorders in Adolescents

A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Professionals

Hazen, Eric P

Rutgers University Press, 2010

Mental Health Disorders in Adolescents provides essential information to help parents, educators, and general practitioners find effective ways to identify and treat psychiatric disorders that many teens face. The first of two reader-friendly sections, "Recognizing the Problem, Finding Help, and Negotiating the System," is designed to help caregivers navigate the often confusing adolescent mental health system. Readers will find comprehensive information about when and how to seek help and the kinds of treatments that are available, including a detailed discussion of psychiatric medications and psychotherapy options. "Common Psychiatric Problems in Adolescence," the second section, offers information on specific psychiatric disorders, including symptoms and warning signs, diagnostic evaluations, treatment options, prognosis, and associated risks for each disorder.

Additionally, Eric P. Hazen, Mark A. Goldstein, and Myrna Chandler Goldstein have compiled two practical appendices-one provides a list of resources, organizations, books, websites, and phone numbers for further information and support. The other serves as a "treatment organizer" to help parents know what school and medical data to bring to a psychiatric evaluation and teach them how to keep track of important discussions related to their child's treatment.

By recognizing the early symptoms of a psychiatric disorder, adults may be able to save a teen's life. Mental Health Disorders in Adolescents offers real options to anyone searching for ways to help at-risk teens.
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cover of Missing Words: The Family Handbook on Adult Hearing Loss

Missing Words

The Family Handbook on Adult Hearing Loss

Kay Thomsett

Gallaudet University Press, 1993

Written by Eve Nickerson, who is deaf, and her daughter Kay Thomsett, Missing Words lays out the practical steps families can take to adjust to a loved one’s hearing loss. This excellent guidebook shows how the exchange of information can be altered at fundamental levels, what these alterations entail, and how they can affect one’s ability to understand and interpret spoken communication. Along with the hands-on tips provided throughout, this handbook considers the potential of cochlear implants, described both by audiologist Holden and by Nickerson, who underwent implant surgery in 1985. For all families coping with a loved one’s hearing loss, Missing Words is the outstanding single resource upon which they can rely.
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cover of Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwe: HIV/AIDS and Traditional Healers

Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwe

HIV/AIDS and Traditional Healers

David S. Simmons

Vanderbilt University Press, 2012

As subSaharan Africa continues to confront the runaway epidemic of HIV/AIDS, traditional healers have been tapped as collaborators in prevention and education efforts. The terms of this collaboration, however, are far from settled and continually contested. As Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwe demonstrates, serious questions continue to linger in the medical community since the explosion of the disease nearly thirty years ago. Are healers obstacles to health development? Do their explanations for the disease disregard biomedical science? Can the worlds of traditional healing and modern medicine coexist and cooperate?


Combining anthropological, historical, and public health perspectives, Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwe explores the intersection of African healing traditions and Western health development, emphasizing the role of this historical relationship in current debates about HIV/AIDS. Drawing on diverse sources including colonial records, missionary correspondence, international health policy reports, and interviews with traditional healers, anthropologist David S. Simmons demonstrates the remarkable adaptive qualities of these disparate communities as they try to meet the urgent needs of the people.

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cover of More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way

More Fire

How to Run the Kenyan Way

Toby Tanser

Westholme Publishing, 2008

An Essential Book for Runners of All Abilities
All of the Author’s Proceeds Go to Shoes4Africa to Support the Construction of Children’s Hospitals in Kenya

Kenya has produced the greatest concentration of world-class runners, and fellow athletes have long been intrigued by their remarkable success. Toby Tanser has devoted much of his professional career living and training among Kenyan runners in order to better understand the unique status of East African athletes. In More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way, the author builds upon the success of his acclaimed Train Hard, Win Easy, the first book to provide insights into the Kenyan "magic" that so many runners and coaches had sought. Instead of special foods or secret techniques, Tanser found that Kenyan runners simply trained incredibly hard, much harder than anyone had realized. By adapting their training regime—which includes three workouts a day—and following their example, runners, whether novices or champions, are able to improve both their performance and enjoyment in running. For those training for a marathon or any other distance race, this book is both practical and inspirational.

Divided into four parts, the book begins with a description of running in Kenya, the landscape, the physical conditions, and the people; the second part concentrates on details of Kenyan training camps, training methods, and their typical training diet; the third profiles individual runners and coaches from the past and present, with each explaining their approach to running so that readers can gain further insight into their methods. The book ends with a discussion on how the reader can adapt Kenyan training practices for their own running requirements. More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way is essential reading for runners of all levels and experience.

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cover of Mortal Men: Living with Asymptomatic HIV

Mortal Men

Living with Asymptomatic HIV

Mac Intyre, Richard

Rutgers University Press, 1999

Narrative non-fiction. A novel-like collection of compelling conversations between an HIV-positive nurse and other gay men with asymptomatic HIV. This book transports the reader into an urban world where gay men negotiated their sexuality, mortality, and health care between the decades of heady liberation and AIDS. See "inside flap" below.
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cover of Mothers and Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding, 1890–1950

Mothers and Medicine

A Social History of Infant Feeding, 1890–1950

Rima D. Apple

University of Wisconsin Press, 1987

In the nineteenth century, infants were commonly breast-fed; by the middle of the twentieth century, women typically bottle-fed their babies on the advice of their doctors.  In this book, Rima D. Apple discloses and analyzes the complex interactions of science, medicine, economics, and culture that underlie this dramatic shift in infant-care practices and women’s lives.
    As infant feeding became the keystone of the emerging specialty of pediatrics in the twentieth century, the manufacture of infant food became a lucrative industry.  More and more mothers reported difficulty in nursing their babies.  While physicians were establishing themselves and the scientific experts and the infant-food industry was hawking the scientific bases of their products, women embraced “scientific motherhood,” believing that science could shape child care practices.  The commercialization and medicalization of infant care established an environment that made bottle feeding not only less feared by many mothers, but indeed “natural” and “necessary.”  Focusing on the history of infant feeding, this book clarifies the major elements involved in the complex and sometimes contradictory interaction between women and the medical profession, revealing much about the changing roles of mothers and physicians in American society.

“The strength of Apple’s book is her ability to indicate how the mutual interests of mothers, doctors, and manufacturers led to the transformation of infant feeding. . . . Historians of science will be impressed with the way she probes the connections between the medical profession and the manufacturers and with her ability to demonstrate how medical theories were translated into medical practice.”—Janet Golden, Isis
 

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cover of Moving Consciously: Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch

Moving Consciously

Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch

Edited by Sondra Fraleigh

University of Illinois Press, 2015

The popularity of yoga and Zen meditation has heightened awareness of somatic practices. Individuals develop the conscious embodiment central to somatics work via movement and dance, or through touch from a skilled teacher or therapist often called a somatic bodyworker. Methods of touch and movement foster generative processes of consciousness in order to create a fluid interconnection between sensation, thought, movement, and expression. In Moving Consciously , Sondra Fraleigh gathers essays that probe ideas surrounding embodied knowledge and the conscious embodiment of movement and dance. Using a variety of perspectives on movement and dance somatics, Fraleigh and other contributors draw on scholarship and personal practice to participate in a multifaceted investigation of a thriving worldwide phenomenon. Their goal: to present the mental and physical health benefits of experiencing one's inner world through sensory awareness and movement integration. A stimulating addition to a burgeoning field, Moving Consciously incorporates concepts from East and West into a timely look at life-changing, intertwined practices that involve dance, movement, performance studies, and education. Contributors: Richard Biehl, Robert Bingham, Hillel Braude, Alison East, Sondra Fraleigh, Kelly Ferris Lester, Karin Rugman, Catherine Schaeffer, Jeanne Schul, and Ruth Way.
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