New Books in Medicine

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The Psychedelic World of Hollywood Hospital Oct 03, 2022

Show notes

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Erika Dyck on the book she co-authored with Jesse Donaldson on an unusual chapter in Canada’s medical history. Entitled The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital, this book was published by Vancouver’s Anvil Press in 2021. This is a history of a private hospital in greater Vancouver which specialized in treatments for alcoholism, trauma and other conditions using LSD, mescalin and other psychotropic substances from the late 1950s until it shut down in the early 1970s. Erika Dyck is professor of History and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.

This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.

Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

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Michael Slouber, "Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras" (Oxford UP, 2016) Sep 29, 2022

Show notes

Michael Slouber's Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras (Oxford UP, 2016) looks at a traditional medical system that flourished over 1,000 years ago in India. The volume brings to life this rich tradition in which knowledge and faith are harnessed in complex visualizations accompanied by secret mantras to an array of gods and goddesses; this religious system is combined with herbal medicine and a fascinating mixof lore on snakes, astrology, and healing. The book's appendices include an accurate, yet readable translation of ten chapters of the most significant Tantric medical text to be recovered: the Kriyakalagunottara.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Wendy Simonds, "Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization" (Routledge, 2016) Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

In Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization(Routledge, 2016), Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations — from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies — in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality.

This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington, 2022). His general area of study is on media representations people and place at festivals and celebrations. His next book project is on research that he conducted about a canoeing and kayaking event that occurs annually on the Upper Mississippi River. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Kathryn Harkup, "Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts" (Bloomsbury, 2020) Sep 26, 2022

Show notes

William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions – shock, sadness, fear – that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up?

In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the chances of seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the theatre were high. It was also a time of important scientific progress. Shakespeare kept pace with anatomical and medical advances, and he included the latest scientific discoveries in his work, from blood circulation to treatments for syphilis. He certainly didn't shy away from portraying the reality of death on stage, from the brutal to the mundane, and the spectacular to the silly.

Elizabethan London provides the backdrop for Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts(Bloomsbury, 2020), as Dr. Kathryn Harkup turns her discerning scientific eye to the Bard and the varied and creative ways his characters die. Was death by snakebite as serene as Shakespeare makes out? Could lack of sleep have killed Lady Macbeth? Can you really murder someone by pouring poison in their ear? Dr. Harkup investigates what actual events may have inspired Shakespeare, what the accepted scientific knowledge of the time was, and how Elizabethan audiences would have responded to these death scenes. Death by Shakespeare will tell you all this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed, with an occasional death by bear-mauling for good measure.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Martin Halliwell, "American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics" (U California Press, 2021) Sep 22, 2022

Show notes

Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in American life. U.S. health care is often hailed as the best in the world, yet the public health emergencies of today often echo the public health emergencies of yesterday: consider the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and COVID-19, the displacement of the Dust Bowl and the havoc of Hurricane Maria, the Reagan administration’s antipathy toward the AIDS epidemic and the lack of accountability during the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Spanning the period from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Donald Trump, American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics (University of California Press, 2021) illuminates how—despite the elevation of health care as a human right throughout the world—vulnerable communities in the United States continue to be victimized by structural inequalities across disparate geographies, income levels, and ethnic groups. Martin Halliwell views contemporary public health crises through the lens of historical and cultural revisionings, suturing individual events together into a narrative of calamity that has brought us to our current crisis in health politics. American Health Crisis considers the future of public health in the United States and, presenting a reinvigorated concept of health citizenship, argues that now is the moment to act for lasting change.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context.

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John Richens, "Tik Merauke: An Epidemic Like No Other" (Melbourne UP, 2022) Sep 21, 2022

Show notes

A medical doctor with an inquisitive mind and a traveling spirit, John Richens thought he had hit upon an exemplary public health case study – the story of donovanosis among the Marind people of early-twentieth-century New Guinea. The rare, sexually transmitted disease, locally known as “tik Merauke,” rose to epidemic level after the ruling Dutch moved to quash the Marind practice of headhunting. The intensive treatment campaign that followed was successful, at least insofar as curing the infection.

However, medical outcomes are only one aspect of the complex history of the Marind’s encounter with imperial power, as Richens recounts in Tik Merauke: An Epidemic Like No Other (Melbourne UP, 2022). He introduces us to a cast of characters drawn, for varying reasons, to New Guinea – among them anthropologists, bird hunters, film directors, and missionaries – through whom Western knowledge of the Marind has been filtered. Along the way, he exposes the “darker side of imperialism” which still afflicts the Marind today.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author. Before moving to the UK in 2021 she was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego.

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Rick Strassman, "The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and DMT/Ayahuasca" (Ulysses Press, 2022) Sep 16, 2022

Show notes

Entering the world of psychedelic drugs can be challenging, and many aren't sure where to start. As research continues to expand and legalization looms on the horizon for psychedelics like psilocybin, you may need a guide to navigate what psychedelics are, how they work, and their potential benefits and risks.

The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and DMT/Ayahuasca(Ulysses Press, 2022) is a complete manual that is accessible to anyone with an interest in these "mind-manifesting" substances. Packed with information on psilocybin, LSD, DMT/ayahuasca, mescaline/peyote, ketamine, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-methoxy-DMT ("the toad"), and Salvia divinorum/salvinorin A, this book is your ultimate reference for understanding the science and history of psychedelics; discovering their potential to treat depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and other disorders, as well as to increase wellness, creativity, and meditation; learning how to safely trip and explaining what we know about microdosing; and recognizing and caring for negative reactions to psychedelics.

Clinical research psychiatrist, founding figure of the American psychedelic research renaissance, and best-selling author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Dr. Rick Strassman shares his experience and perspectives as neither advocate nor foe of psychedelics in order to help readers understand the effects of these remarkable drugs.

Geert Slabbekoorn works as an analyst in the field of public security. In addition he has published on different aspects of dark web drug trade in Belgium. Find him on twitter, tweeting all things drug related @GeertJS.

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Sanjiv Chopra, "Coffee the Magical Elixir: Facts That Will Astound and Perk You Up" (Bookbaby, 2021) Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

Today I talked to Sanjiv Chopra about his book Coffee the Magical Elixir: Facts That Will Astound and Perk You Up (Bookbaby, 2021)

2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed globally everyday. Coffee has a myriad of health benefits the overwhelming majority are which not known to the lay public and even physicians. There has been a plethora of research published in peer reviewed scientific journals attesting to the health benefits of coffee. They are mechanistic explanations and often a dose dependent benefit. Coffee drinkers have a lower risk of seven common cancers, cirrhosis of the liver, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's Disease, and many other common ailments. Astoundingly coffee drinkers, both women and men have lower total and cause specific mortality. Telomeres are caps at the end of our chromosomes that protect the chromosomes from sticking to each other and from fraying. Shorten telomere length implies accelerated cellular aging and is seen in mothers of chronically disabled children and care givers of folks with Alzheimer's Dementia. Longer telomere length is seen in individuals who exercise, meditate, are on the Mediterranean diet and those who drink coffee. Here is a mind boggling fact. Increase caffeine intake is linked with shortened telomeres, while increased coffee intake is linked with longer telomeres. Coffee has thousands of constituents and it is not caffeine that confers the health benefits.

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Sarah Lamb, "Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession" (Rutgers UP, 2017) Sep 09, 2022

Show notes

In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging—striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.

The contributors to Sarah Lamb'sSuccessful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession (Rutgers UP, 2017) explore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal—aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Georg Striedter, "Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns" (MIT Press, 2022) Sep 07, 2022

Show notes

Biomedical research using various animal species and in vitro cellular systems has resulted in both major successes and translational failure. In Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns (MIT Press, 2022), comparative neurobiologist Georg Striedter examines how biomedical researchers have used animal species and in vitro cellular systems to understand and develop treatments for human diseases ranging from cancer and polio to Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. Although there have been some major successes, much of this “translational” research on model systems has failed to generalize to humans. Striedter explores the history of such research, focusing on the models used and considering the question of model selection from a variety of perspectives—the philosophical, the historical, and that of practicing biologists.

Striedter reviews some philosophical concepts and ethical issues, including concerns over animal suffering and the compromises that result. He traces the history of the most widely used animal and in vitro models, describing how they compete with one another in a changing ecosystem of models. He examines how therapies for bacterial and viral infections, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological disorders have been developed using animal and cell culture models—and how research into these diseases has both taken advantage of and been hindered by model system differences. Finally, Striedter argues for a “big tent” biology, in which a diverse set of models and research strategies can coexist productively.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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