Modern Medicine For Modern Times

The use of honey can be traced back to the Stone Age. Evidence can be found for its nutritional and medicinal use beginning with prehistoric and ancient civilizations. Currently, there is a resurgence of scientific interest in natural medicinal products, such as honey, by researchers, the medical community, and even the general public. Honey in Traditional and Modern Medicine provides a detailed compendium on the medical uses of honey, presenting its enormous potential and its limitations. The book covers honey’s ethnomedicinal uses, chemical composition, and physical properties. It discusses the healing properties of honey, including antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties. It also examines the botanical origin of honey, a critical factor in relation to its medicinal use, along with the complex subject of the varying composition of honey. Honey’s antibacterial qualities and other attributes are described in a chapter dedicated to Leptospermum, or Manuka honey, a unique honey with potential for novel therapeutic applications. Chapters explore a variety of medicinal uses for honey, including its healing properties and use in burn and wound management. They review honey’s beneficial effects on medical conditions, such as gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular diseases, diabetic ulcers, and cancers as well as in pediatrics and animal health and wellness. The book also examines honey-based formulations, modern methods for chemical analysis of honey, and the history and reality of "mad honey." The final chapters cover honey in the food industry, as a nutrient, and for culinary use.

The practice of Medicine has changed dramatically over the last few hundred years. From its rudimentary beginnings, to a very detailed understanding of the human body functioning and anatomy, our current knowledge of the human being has never been so profound. Not only the medical sciences have evolved, but also many others like chemical, agricultural, astrological and physics just to name a few. The "modernization" of our way of life has brought comfort and improved our survival but at the same time has created an environment that is very detrimental to our health. This modern world full of radiation, toxicities, antibiotics and hormones fed to animals, genetically modified foods and other insults has created an epidemic of chronic diseases, like Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, Auto-Immune, Neurologic, Psychiatric and Respiratory diseases. Even diseases that were rare before like Autism and Fibromyalgia are rampant nowadays. Unfortunately, medicine has faced these serious challenges by using more and more chemical prescription (and over-the-counter) medications. Some of them have been very helpful but most of them have just created more insult to our already damaged bodies. These medications cause side effects, nutritional depletion and interact between each other creating sometimes more trouble than benefits. This book, Modern Medicine for Modern Times, is an introduction to a type of medicine that addresses the root causes of diseases. The book explores the history of Medicine, Pharmaceuticals and the emerging of Functional Medicine as a science. This type of Medicine goes beyond the complaint, disease or finding in a test or scan. It addresses the "Why" and solves it at its origin. Most of the chronic diseases of modern times have common causative factors on those root causes, like inflammation, oxidation, nutrient and hormone deficiencies, heavy metal and other environmental toxicities, dehydration, intestinal health, physical activity, food choices and stress management. The book explains each of these root or foundational causes of health and disease. And provides tips on how to balance them all, both in our bodies and in our environment, so we are able to mitigate, if not eradicate, most of these diseases of modern times.

The medical achievements of the post-war years rank as one of the supreme epochs of human endeavour. Advances in surgical technique, new ideas about the nature of disease and huge innovations in drug manufacture vanquished most common causes of early death, But, since the mid-1970s the rate of development has slowed, and the future of medicine is uncertain. How has this happened? James Le Fanu's hugely acclaimed survey of the 'twelve definitive moments' of modern medicine and the intellectual vacuum which followed them has been fully revised and updated for this edition. The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine is both riveting drama and a clarion call for change.

The increasing prevalence of diabetes mellitus world-wide is an issue of major socio-economic concern. Scientific interest in plant-derived medicine is steadily rising, yet there is often a wide disparity in the caliber of information available. A detailed compilation of scientific information from across the globe, Traditional Medicines for Modern Times: Antidiabetic Plants highlights the potential role of dietary and medicinal plant materials in the prevention, treatment, and control of diabetes and its complications. The book not only describes plants traditionally used to treat diabetes, but evaluates the scientific studies on these plants and describes in vitro, in vivo, and clinical methods for their investigation. It examines the theory that changes in dietary patterns from traditional plant foodstuffs containing beneficial components, to richer, more processed "junk" food is responsible for the increased prevalence of diabetes worldwide. The book begins with an introduction to the disease diabetes mellitus written by a consultant physician and an up-to-date, detailed summary table and discussion of scientifically screened antidiabetic plants compiled by authors from the Jodrell Laboratories, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. The next chapters provide an outline of clinical, in vivo, and in vitro methods for assessing antidiabetic activity of plant materials, followed by descriptions of traditional plant remedies used in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Australia written by an international group of authors active in antidiabetic plant research. The final chapters emphasize the role of particular phytochemical groups in the treatment or prevention of diabetes. By documenting both traditional and scientifically derived knowledge, Traditional Medicines for Modern Times: Antidiabetic Plants brings us closer to the translation of traditional knowledge into new methods for treatment of this important disease.

Insightful, informed, and at times controversial in its conclusions, A Short History of Medicine offers an exceptional introduction to the major and many minor facets of its subject. In this lively, learned, and wholly engrossing volume, F. González-Crussi presents a brief yet authoritative five-hundred-year history of the science, the philosophy, and the controversies of modern medicine. While this illuminating work mainly explores Western medicine over the past five centuries, González-Crussi also describes how modern medicine’s roots extend to both Greco-Roman antiquity and Eastern medical traditions. Covered here in engaging detail are the birth of anatomy and the practice of dissections; the transformation of surgery from a gruesome art to a sophisticated medical specialty; a short history of infectious diseases; the evolution of the diagnostic process; advances in obstetrics and anesthesia; and modern psychiatric therapies and the challenges facing organized medicine today. Written by a renowned author and educator, this book gives us the very essence of our search to mitigate suffering, save lives, and unlock the mysteries of the human animal. “[González-Crussi fuses] science, literature, and personal history into highly civilized artifacts.” –The Washington Post, on There Is a World Elsewhere

Much of the improved survival rate from heart attack can be traced to Eugene Braunwald's work. He proved that myocardial infarction was an hours-long dynamic process which could be altered by treatment. Thomas H. Lee tells the life story of a physician whose activist approach transformed not just cardiology but the culture of American medicine.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we have become accustomed to medical breakthroughs and conditioned to assume that, regardless of illnesses, doctors almost certainly will be able to help—not just by diagnosing us and alleviating our pain, but by actually treating or even curing diseases, and significantly improving our lives. For most of human history, however, that was far from the case, as veteran medical historian Michael Bliss explains in The Making of Modern Medicine. Focusing on a few key moments in the transformation of medical care, Bliss reveals the way that new discoveries and new approaches led doctors and patients alike to discard fatalism and their traditional religious acceptance of suffering in favor of a new faith in health care and in the capacity of doctors to treat disease. He takes readers in his account to three turning points—a devastating smallpox outbreak in Montreal in 1885, the founding of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School, and the discovery of insulin—and recounts the lives of three crucial figures—researcher Frederick Banting, surgeon Harvey Cushing, and physician William Osler—turning medical history into a fascinating story of dedication and discovery. Compact and compelling, this searching history vividly depicts and explains the emergence of modern medicine—and, in a provocative epilogue, outlines the paradoxes and confusions underlying our contemporary understanding of disease, death, and life itself.

In a work that spans the twentieth century, Nancy Tomes questions the popular--and largely unexamined--idea that in order to get good health care, people must learn to shop for it. Remaking the American Patient explores the consequences of the consumer economy and American medicine having come of age at exactly the same time. Tracing the robust development of advertising, marketing, and public relations within the medical profession and the vast realm we now think of as "health care," Tomes considers what it means to be a "good" patient. As she shows, this history of the coevolution of medicine and consumer culture tells us much about our current predicament over health care in the United States. Understanding where the shopping model came from, why it was so long resisted in medicine, and why it finally triumphed in the late twentieth century helps explain why, despite striking changes that seem to empower patients, so many Americans remain unhappy and confused about their status as patients today.