Abraham Verghese, My Own Country

Abraham Verghese, My Own Country. Verghese tells his own story of being an infectious disease doctor in the 1980's in rural Tennessee. A moving personal history of the AIDs epidemic in America: sometimes a little clunky and in need of editing, other times dated in language and perspective, still a riveting story and one we need to remember.

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The story of Henrietta Lacks, her family, and her cells. A riveting glimpse of history.

Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains

Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains. The Paul Farmer story. A dangerous book to read; a book to change your life.

Charles L. Bardes, Pale Faces

Charles L. Bardes, Pale Faces: The Masks of Anemia. A lovely old fashioned little book about blood. A scholarly rumination about history and medicine - the nature of diagnosis and illness. Sometimes a little too ruminative, a little too effusive. I didn't mind, although I occasionally rolled my eyes at prose like this:

"A red cell lives for ninety days, give or take, and when it is old and gray and full of sleep the spleen recognizes its senectitude and takes it aside, takes it down, administers some fatal blow and breaks it apart, recycles its parts for future use, its iron and vital stuff."

Even with this lack of restraint, the overall story was pleasing. I wouldn't mind if textbooks were written in the same style, with myth and literature interwoven with description. I picked it up at the library because it was small and attractive, and it lived up to its looks.

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia. I love Oliver Sacks. What I love most about his books is the boundless curiosity that spreads out from topic to topic, and I also appreciate the respect and obvious love he has for his patients. He has a passion for music himself, and so the exploration of the neurology of music was captivating, and more personal than some of his other books. This book also had a little less natural structure and tightness than some of his other collections. Lots of stories about memory loss and brain injury that alter musical experience, and summaries of interesting research and case studies related to music and the brain. I'm not a very musical person myself, but as I read this I did think about the place music has in my head, about the memories and emotions it can evoke -and I also thought about other more musical people I know, and how large a portion of their lives is wrapped up in playing and listening to music. Matt is like that, and it baffles me. I think my involvement with books is just as mysterious to him as his musical focus is to me.

J. H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead

Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philidelphia in 1793. You know, I've always been fascinated by plagues since my Sunday school days, when I pronounced the word like it's spelled and asked questions like: what kind of boils did the Egyptians get, anyway? So when I was assigned this book for my medical history class I jumped into it. Anyway, Powell alternates between a dry, factual tone and sensationalism, relying heavily on contemporary newspaper articles and correspondence. The background of the epidemic is fascinating, especially because in 1793 Philidelphia was the nation's capital, and therefore a political and social center. The small details included about civic life, commerce, newspapers, the Quaker church, and household routine are riveting.

Powell's "hero" or at least major protagonist, Dr. Benjamin Rush, is a problematic figure. There was a feud between medical practitioners about proper treatment for yellow fever victims - the "French method" consisting of wine, baths, and gentle purges against Dr. Rush's discovery of drastic bleeding and mercury purges. Rush was popularly regarded as a hero for his devotion, courage, and confidence in treatment; although some physicians at that time rightly regarded his treatments as dangerous. He gave great hope to his patients: telling them "You have nothing but a yellow fever," and did much to quell the panic in Philidelphia. However, it is amazing that his patients survived his "heroic" bloodlettings, because he and his contemporaries thought humans had twice their actual blood volume, and sometimes prescribed bleeding of more blood than the patient could actually contain. He was so enchanted by his theory, that "it never occurred to him that he might be wrong," even more, he considered physicians that did not follow his treatment guilty of murder.

Yellow fever is itself very interesting, a viral disease transmitted by a mosquito vector. Outbreaks continue in Africa, South and Central America, and the Caribbean. In non-immune populations outbreaks are very severe. There is now a vaccine, but there is still no cure, and only supportive treatment. It causes jaundice, bloody vomit, headaches, and seizures as well as fever.

(We also read excerpts from John Kelly's The Great Mortality about the black plague which was both infuriatingly and interestingly voiced, and as soon as I can rustle up a copy I'm going to read it and write about all of Kelly's mistakes.)