March HistoryCAT: Science and Medicine

"French Nocturnal & Sundial, ca. 1600 (Oxford University Museum of the History of Science, UK)" by takomabibelot is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

From wikipedia:
History of Science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, wherein formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes.
…
Natural philosophy was transformed during the Scientific Revolution in 16th- to 17th-century Europe, as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The New Science that emerged was more mechanistic in its worldview, more integrated with mathematics, and more reliable and open as its knowledge was based on a newly defined scientific method. More "revolutions" in subsequent centuries soon followed. The chemical revolution of the 18th century, for instance, introduced new quantitative methods and measurements for chemistry. In the 19th century, new perspectives regarding the conservation of energy, age of Earth, and evolution came into focus. And in the 20th century, new discoveries in genetics and physics laid the foundations for new sub disciplines such as molecular biology and particle physics. Moreover, industrial and military concerns as well as the increasing complexity of new research endeavors ushered in the era of "big science," particularly after World War II.

History of Medicine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
The history of medicine is the study and documentation of the evolution of medical treatments, practices, and knowledge over time. Medical historians often drawn from other humanities fields of study including economics, health sciences, sociology, and politics to better understand the institutions, practices, people, professions, and social systems that have shaped medicine. When a period which predates or lacks written sources regarding medicine, information is instead drawn from archaeological sources.

Suggestions:
These are all books I’ve read. It does appear that I lean toward the medicine topic!

Nonfiction:
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women / Kate Moore (Poison)
The Poisoner’s Handbook / Deborah Blum (Poison)
The Killer of Little Shepherds / Douglas Starr (Forensic Science)
Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition / Owen Beattie (Forensic Science)
The Fossil Hunter / Shelley Emling (Fossils)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks / Rebecca Skloot (Medicine)
The American Plague / Molly Caldwell Crosby (Medicine)
The Great Influenza / John M. Berry (Medicine)
Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues… / Jennifer Wright (Medicine)
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice… / Gregg Olsen (Medicine)
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything / Lydia Kang (Medicine)
Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors... / Olivia Campbell (Medicine)
The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai / John Tayman (Medicine)
Storm Kings / Lee Sandlin (Weather)
Isaac’s Storm / Erik Larson (Weather)
Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado / Nancy Mathis (Weather)
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science Of Life In The Void / Mary Roach (Space)
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History / Elizabeth Kolbert (Nature)

Fiction:
The Pull of the Stars / Emma Donoghue (Medicine)
The Birth House / Ami McKay (Medicine)
Doomsday Book / Connie Willis (Medicine)
Outlander / Diana Gabaldon (Medicine)
Fever 1793 / Laurie Halse Anderson (Medicine)
Year of Wonders / Geraldine Brooks (Medicine)
Remarkable Creatures / Tracy Chevalier (Fossils)
Where the Crawdads Sing / Delia Owen (Nature)

Don’t forget to post to the wiki:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2024_HistoryCAT#March:_Science_.26_Medic...


"History of Medicine a029850" by Children's Bureau Centennial is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.

I may read A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel about Copernicus

I'm planning to read Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks -- A Cool History of a Hot Commodity by Amy Brady.

Ok, you had me at the first book on your list! I have owned The Radium Girls for ages and now seems to be the time to finally read it!

Not sure what I'll be reading, but I would recommend The Physician by Noah Gordon. It's been a long time since I read it, but I recall really liking it.

I will use this prompt to continue with my Outlander reread. Next up is Voyager.

I can recommend The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.

>5 fuzzi: and >7 pamelad: Thank you for providing additional recommendations.

I have yet to decide what I'm reading, as well.

>6 MissBrangwen: Hmmm, I didn't even think of Outlander. I could continue with the series.

It's about time I've read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which will also fit the AlphaKIT.

Good topic! I can read a twofer. The March topic in RTT is Medicine, Epidemics, and Plagues. I think I will read Polio, An American Story by David Oshinsky.

>11 Tess_W: I wonder if I noticed that and asked for March here? I can't remember!

My current plan is to read A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (also to fit RTT theme).

If that doesn't work I also have The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, historical fiction set in the 1918 flu epidemic.

I can recommend Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, which is historical fiction about the plague in 1665 in Eyam, Derbyshire, England. It was well-researched and a good read.

I completed Polio by David Oshinsky, a 5 star read.

I finished Ice by Amy Brady, a history of ice in the United States.

Oh wow, I have 2 books that can fit this category: The Woman with the Cure by Lynn Cullen, and Eve by Cat Bohannon. Given that I've been reading some tomes lately, I'll probably choose Lynn Cullen's book.

And I read Journal of a Plague Year during lockdown and zowie! It was like reading any newspaper or local or national news story during that time, in its relevance and observations of plague victims and survivors. I highly recommend it, either as catharsis or knowledge or shared experiences.

I just finished The Lady in the Coppergate Tower by Nancy Campbell Allen, in which the hero is a surgeon and the heroine is his assistant (and also has magical healing powers). At one point they treat an injured character and discuss medical procedures such as blood transfusions and organ transplants. The setting is quasi-Victorian with many steampunk elements, so it might be a stretch to call it "historical," but I've decided to count it!

I read Justinian's Flea by William Rosen.

>18 Tess_W: I read that 7 years ago. I remember the author couldn't see a rabbit hole without plunging down it

>19 Robertgreaves: Glad I wasn't just imagining it!

>20 Tess_W: No, you definitely weren't imagining it. There was a lot of useful history here about a time in the Roman Empire that I was not familiar with, but he sure did go down a lot of different paths, and his writing style was not helpful. The book could have been a lot more concise.

>18 Tess_W: >21 atozgrl: For fiction set against a background of the Justinian plague, can I suggest Five for Silver by M. E. Mayer

I have finished After the ice which spans global human history from 20,000BC to 5,000BC. Unfortunately, the author's main narrative device didn't work at all for me, and reading this was a real slog.

>22 Robertgreaves: Thanks, Robert. Going in search of that one@

Went to my local library at lunch to pick up a couple of books for LT groups, and there, lo and behold, on display was a book I could not pass up for this month's challenge: Girls and Their Monsters about a set of quadruplets and their mid-century diagnosis of schizophrenia. Started it last night and looking forward to some interesting reading.

I have finished Die Reise unserer Gene which describes how archaeogenetics have changed our ideas about human evolution and some epidemics. The author is director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (where the Neanderthal genome was sequenced and showed that they did interbreed with homo sapiens) and wisely concentrates on stuff that affected Europe. He teams up with a journalist which ensures that the intended lay audience can make sense of the findings. Full of surprising and amazing news.

I am really enjoying The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - so sorry it took me so long to get to it! Great that this challenge spurred me on.

I read Beyond the Body Farm by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Dr. Bass is a legendary forensic anthropologist perhaps best known for founding the "body farm" research facility. This book profiles several cases that Dr. Bass has worked on during his decades-long career. You can see how the field and its methodologies have advanced over the course of his career, in no small measure due to his research and that of his students.

I still plan to read The Woman with the Cure, but while I was at the library picking up several books on hold I glanced at one of their displays and came home with Girls and their Monsters by Audrey Clare Farley.

It's about a set of quadruplets diagnosed in the 1950's (when the women were in their 20's) as schizophrenic. The author makes excellent contrasts between a schizophrenic diagnosis then and now, including the Victorian and eugenics ideas of lower classes being more prone to violence and beyond care, while the still-racist field of psychiatry/psychology bent over backwards for these charming blond haired girls.

I read The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy Winegard, though I found it a bit disappointing because it read more like a Western Civ/military history overview with added notes about the impact of malaria and/or yellow fever on a given war or invasion than the epidemiological focuse I was expecting and hoping for.

I finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot on Sunday - really glad I finally got to it! Very well done - it alternates chapter by chapter about Henrietta and her family and the medical/research/ethical side of the first human cells able to be grown in the lab.

I just finished Pathogenesis, which was excellent. Highly recommend!

April's thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/359222

I finished The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel, about women astronomers working at the Harvard Observatory in the late 1800's and early 1900's, and the significant contributions they made to the classification of stars.

I quickly read Girls and Their Monsters because it was so engrossing. I plan to start The Woman with the Cure this week.

The Sawbones Book: The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine / Justin & Sydnee McElroy
4 stars

You might guess from the subtitle that this is a humourous look at the history of medicine. The authors are a family doctor, and her husband, a layperson. The book appears to be based on a podcast (I have no clue about this podcast). Some of the topics they look at include: opium, charcoal, mercury, radium, arsenic, honey, chocolate, and vinegar. Also, weight loss, the Black Plague, erectile dysfunction, spontaneous combustion, phrenology, lobotomy, poop, the dancing plague, homeopathy, bloodletting, polio, and more.

This was funny! I’ve read a number of medical history books that look at many of these things, so some of the stories are repeats, but it’s still nice to get the reminders, since often with books like this that include so many different topics, it’s easy to forget. There were some fantastic illustrations, and little side-notes of the authors dialogue between themselves about the various topics. Even though some of the topics can be pretty disgusting (though it didn’t bother me), this is a good way to read about it with the humour mixed in.

I had hoped to also get to a different science topic in addition to medicine, but I don't think I'm going to have time this month.

I read Year of wonders by Geraldine Brooks for this month's theme. This book is about an outbreak of the bubonic plague in England in 1665-66, and a small village that gets hit by the plague. The villagers decide to isolate themselves, so as to avoid spreading the plague to neighboring towns. The book tells what happens to the people there during the time that they are isolated. It is fiction but based on a true story.

I very much liked this story. We can see how the plague spreads through the village, while the villagers themselves don't understand it. It was interesting to read the different reactions of the people in the village to the plague, and how their suffering causes some of them to blame and attack some of their neighbors. It also shows how the same circumstances bring out better actions and behavior in other villagers. The author tells the story through the eyes of Anna, using an older style of speaking. There were quite a few archaic words used in the story that I had to look up, but it helped to set the scene. This book really drew me in with the story and the vivid characters.

I read A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (1722), which is also about the 1665 plague. Defoe wrote the novel as if it were a newly discovered manuscript by an observer ("H.F.") living in London at the time. Defoe did much research on the plague and includes real statistics reported by H.F. in the journal. It's amazing how some things were so much like our own pandemic and yet how things were so, so different. He de-bunks quacks and strange theories, notes the economic hardships the plague created and offers lots of anecdotal stories. I'm not sure I would have appreciated this as much if I had read it 10 years ago, but today it is eerily relevant.

I read All Quiet On The Western Plains by Isabella Hargreaves. It is a short historical romance set in Australia after World War One. The protagonists are an ex-soldier who suffers from symptoms that look like PTSD to me, and a nurse who used to work behind the frontline and moves to Australia to take a job in a rural hospital.

I still hope to get to Voyager sooner or later, but I read this one on a whim and found that it was a good fit!

>39 kac522: I read that book during lockdown in 2020 and I am so glad to see someone else on LT who has read it! I was blown away by its parallels to 2020 in the reactions of the populace, how the plague travelled, the effects on commerce, people just throwing a scarf around their neck to go to their shopping.

>41 threadnsong: Yes, so many parallels, and yet so different......removing & burying bodies only at night....literally nailing sick people into their houses with guards outside their doors to be sure no one went in OR out....people could die within hours of getting sick.....and having no idea how it spread and communication chiefly by rumor. What a scary time that must have been.

I finished the last 20 pages The Woman with the Cure on April 2, then promptly got ready to go out of state on a camping expedition to see the eclipse in Illinois. So I realize I'm a bit late, but still wanted to post my accomplishment for this book challenge!