At The Bedside

"In Awake at the Bedside, pioneers of palliative and end-of-life care as well as doctors, chaplains, caregivers and even poets offer wisdom that will challenge, uplift, comfort--and change the way we think about death. Equal parts instruction manual and spiritual testimony, it includes specific instructions and personal accounts to inspire, counsel, and teach."--Amazon.com.

David Rothman gives us a brilliant, finely etched study of medical practice today. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the practice of medicine in the United States underwent a most remarkable--and thoroughly controversial--transformation. The discretion that the profession once enjoyed has been increasingly circumscribed, and now an almost bewildering number of parties and procedures participate in medical decision making. Well into the post-World War II period, decisions at the bedside were the almost exclusive concern of the individual physician, even when they raised fundamental ethical and social issues. It was mainly doctors who wrote and read about the morality of withholding a course of antibiotics and letting pneumonia serve as the old man's best friend, of considering a newborn with grave birth defects a "stillbirth" thus sparing the parents the agony of choice and the burden of care, of experimenting on the institutionalized the retarded to learn more about hepatitis, or of giving one patient and not another access to the iron lung when the machine was in short supply. Moreover, it was usually the individual physician who decided these matters without formal discussions with patients, their families, or even with colleagues, and certainly without drawing the attention of journalists, judges, or professional philosophers. The impact of the invasion of outsiders into medical decision-making, most generally framed, was to make the invisible visible. Outsiders to medicine--that is, lawyers, judges, legislators, and academics--have penetrated its every nook and cranny, in the process giving medicine exceptional prominence on the public agenda and making it the subject of popular discourse. The glare of the spotlight transformed medical decision making, shaping not merely the external conditions under which medicine would be practiced (something that the state, through the regulation of licensure, had always done), but the very substance of medical pract

A lavishly illustrated companion to The Bedside Book of Birds explores the relationships between predators and prey, drawing on mythology, nature writings, and other sources to provide coverage of both real and fictional creatures.

Delightful tales for bedtime reading. This, truly, is a bedside book of saints, meant to lift the spirits of souls wearied by the day. These charming and often humorous stories of eminently human saints will ease your soul and help bring you good dreams, giving you fresh hope for the morning.

This book teaches readers the clinical skills residents in neurology have to acquire in the course of their training, and approaches neurology like a doctor approaches a patient: first there is a chapter on how to perform an efficient neurological history according to neuroanatomical key features, then a chapter on the bedside examination, followed by chapters on differential diagnosis, diagnostic procedures and lastly, the treatment. Neurology at the Bedside aims to provide readers with a personal clinical mentor. It takes them by the hand and guides them through the whole patient encounter from the history to the treatment, at each step pointing out what is essential and what is not. Extensive differential diagnostic flow charts and detailed treatment suggestions make it a perfect coat pocket reference for the wards. In addition, more than 50 unique case histories cover the entire spectrum of the field. Neurology at the Bedside is written for neurologists in training: residents as well as senior house officers. Also medical students, general practitioners and others with an interest in neurology will find invaluable information here that is difficult to look up in traditional textbooks or online references.

On its first appearance in 1957, Hugh and Graham Greene's The Spy's Bedside Book provoked a storm of interest, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, 100 copies were bought by East German Intelligence. This classic anthology, with a new introduction by the former head of MI5, Stella Rimington, includes stories by some of the great writers on spying and many practitioners, including Ian Fleming and John Buchan, Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Belle Boyd, Walter Schellenberg and Major André, Sir Paul Dukes and Vladimir Petrov, and. from the golden age of mystery and suspense, William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim. There are also some unexpected figures: William Blake, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann, all suspected of spying in three great wars. How can you hide messages in a boiled egg? Why should you always put pepper in your vodka when in Russia? Answers to these questions and much more can be found in this thrilling collection, which will enthral readers once again with its tales of espionage from a bygone era.