Potent Medicine

Potent Medicine could be the most important book on transforming healthcare ever published. Why? Because John Toussaint, MD, has dedicated his career to taking action that will leave our children with a better healthcare system than we inherited. This book is written for patients, insurance companies, policy-makers and those who work in a hospital or health system. Dr Toussaint has identified actions each group needs to take to make improvements to the system. For example true transparency means using words like death and risk and error. A patient evaluating a hospital for heart surgery needs to research a few simple measures of quality. * Number of medical errors committed in a hospital yesterday, shown both as a number and a historical trend * Number of surgical infections last month * Number of people who come in with chest pains and die * Percentage of people requiring this surgery who died in the hospital, and how many died within the last six months * Average number of days to a full recovery Potent Medicine is the compelling follow-up to Dr Toussaints first book, On the Mend. The stories highlight the tragic consequences that occur when medical teams do not follow a patients progress and just pass them through the system. It offers practical advice from Wisconsins collaborative efforts to transform healthcare and deliver better patient value and is focused on these 3 elements: * Delivery of care designed around the patient - using lean principles and methods to deliver care focused on patient needs * Transparency of treatment quality and cost - making healthcare outcomes public for everyone * Payment for outcome - move away from fee-for-service to a system that pays based on quality and efficient care Potent Medicine highlights the steps to achieving a quality healthcare system.

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013 At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines. Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful. Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.

Treat the diseases affecting large animals! Veterinary Medicine, 11th Edition provides up-to-date information on the diseases of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Comprehensive coverage includes the principles of clinical examination and making a diagnosis, along with specific therapy recommendations. For easier use, this edition has been divided into two volumes and restructured into a logical, anatomically based approach to disease. From internationally known veterinary experts Peter Constable, Kenneth Hinchcliff, Stanley Done, and Walter Grünberg, this book is the definitive, one-stop reference for farm animal and equine care. Comprehensive coverage includes information essential to any large-animal veterinarian, especially those working with horses, cattle, sheep, goats, or pigs. Coverage of diseases addresses major large-animal diseases of all countries, including foreign animal and emerging diseases. User-friendly format makes it easier to quickly absorb key information. Quick review/synopsis sections make important information on complex diseases easy to find. NEW! Convenient, easy-access format is organized by organ systems, and divides the content into two compact volumes with the same authoritative coverage. Nearly 200 new color photographs and line drawings are included in this edition. NEW full-color design improves navigation, clarifies subject headings, and includes more boxes, tables, and charts for faster reference. New Diseases Primarily Affecting the Reproductive System chapter is added. Updated and expanded chapter on pharmacotherapy lists therapeutic interventions and offers treatment boxes and principles of antibiotic use. Expanded sections on herd health include biosecurity and infection control, and valuable Strength of Evidence boxes. NEW or extensively revised sections include topics such as the Schmallenberg and Bluetongue viral epidemics of ruminants in Europe, Wesselbron disease in cattle, hypokalemia in adult cattle, equine multinodular pulmonary fibrosis, Hendra virus infection, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, torque teno virus, and numerous recently identified congenital and inherited disorders of large animals. Additional content is provided on lameness in cattle and the diseases of cervids.

List of members in each volume.

More than two million medical students, doctors and other health professionals from around the globe have owned a copy of Davidson’s Principles and Practice of Medicine since it was first published. Today’s readers rely on this beautifully illustrated text to provide up-to-date detail of contemporary medical practice, presented in a style that is concise and yet easy to read. Davidson’s provides the factual knowledge required to practise medicine, explaining it in the context of underlying principles, basic science and research evidence, and shows how to apply this knowledge to the management of patients who present with problems rather than specific diseases. The book has won numerous prizes including being highly commended in the British Medical Association book awards. Davidson’s global perspective is enhanced by the input of an international team of authors and a distinguished International Advisory Board from 17 countries. Building on the foundations laid down by its original editor, Davidson’s remains one of the world’s leading and most respected textbooks of medicine. The underlying principles of medicine are described concisely in the first part of the book, and the detailed practice of medicine within each sub-specialty is described in later system-based chapters. Most chapters begin with a two-page overview of the important elements of the clinical examination, including a manikin to illustrate the key steps in the examination of the relevant system. A practical, problem-based clinical approach is described in the ‘Presenting Problems’ sections, to complement the detailed descriptions of each disease. The text is extensively illustrated, with over 1000 diagrams, clinical photographs, and radiology and pathology images. 1350 text boxes present information in a way suitable for revision, including 150 clinical evidence boxes summarising the results of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials and 65 ’In Old Age’ boxes highlighting important aspects of medical practice in the older population. A combined index and glossary of medical acronyms contains over 10 000 subject entries. The contents can also be searched comprehensively as part of the online access to the whole book on the StudentConsult platform. Access over 500 self-testing questions with answers linked to the book’s content for further reading. The text uses both SI and non-SI units to make it suitable for readers throughout the globe. A new chapter specifically on Stroke Disease recognises the emergence of Stroke Medicine as a distinct clinical and academic discipline. A rationalisation of the 1350 boxes used throughout the book gives a simpler and clearer presentation of the various categories. New ‘In Adolescence’ boxes recognise the fact that many chronic disorders begin in childhood and become the responsibility of physicians practising adult medicine. These boxes acknowledge the overlap ‘transitional’ phase and highlight the key points of importance when looking after young people. The regular introduction of new authors and editors maintains the freshness of each new edition. On this occasion Dr Ian Penman has joined the editorial team and 18 new authors bring new experience and ideas to the content and presentation of the textbook. An expanded International Advisory Board of 38 members includes new members from several different countries.