I had the distinct pleasure of reading Stroke Diaries this past week. Its author, Dr. Olajide Williams, is a dear friend and contributor to this blog. I first met Dr. Willliams (or Jide, pronounced “gee-day”) as a young neurology resident at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. I was in my third year of medical school and rotating through the neurology service.
A few things struck me about Jide back then. First, he was the only resident who never got an answer wrong when put on the spot (aka “pimped”) by his superiors. I was in awe of his knowledge base — something he’d developed by disciplining himself to do additional reading long after his peers were asleep.
Second, Jide was always immaculately dressed — his stylish, brightly-colored shirts and ties complimented his dark skin and cheerful, British accent.
And third, his love for his patients and medical students was abundantly clear, as he always went out of his way to educate them in the most friendly and sensitive of ways. In short, Jide was an inspiration to me — as a teacher, a neurologist, and a friend.
Stroke Diaries is a reflection of Jide’s character — a perfect blend of poetic vignette and straightforward science. This short book (130 pages) chronicles the true life stories of various patients who’ve suffered strokes. Read more »
Michael Pollan has become one of our most important writers about human nutrition. His book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), spelled out why the almost eight billion humans on this planet had better balance what we eat — for our own health and the health of the planet.
He published a small book in 2009 (Penguin Books) called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. His rules are around seven words in three brief statements: “Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.” How simple and wise is that?
These three statements make up the three parts of this small book, with lots of practical “rules.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at eDocAmerica*
This engaging tale of the race of science and medicine against chemical poisonings for profit and punishment features the true story of NYC chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler.
Of course, the other actors are arsenic, methanol, chloroform, thallium, and radium, among others. In the teens through the mid-1930s, long before benchtop atomic absorption spectrophotometry and LC/MS instruments, Norris and Gettler devised methods to detect poisons in human tissues with high sensitivity. These advances led to the prosecution of some, the absolution of the wrongly-accused, and revealed that our own government poisoned citizens who dared to challenge Prohibition. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
What’s amazing is that despite the vocal movement to empower patients, no one has put together a well-referenced, readable book to help patients understand how they should use personalized medicine to influence their health — until now.
Enter The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine (Rodale 2010), something of a blueprint of patient liberation written by Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired magazine. It offers constructive narrative not only about the importance of the decisions we make but how to apply the concept of an old-fashioned decision tree in making those decisions. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
Dr. Jon LaPook talks to author Lisa Grunwald and psychiatrist Bill Fisher about the history of childrearing as it relates to Grunwald’s new novel “The Irresistible Henry House.”
The guy is Henry House, the title character of my friend Lisa Grunwald’s latest novel, “The Irresistible Henry House,” and in addition to the fact that he’s fictional, he’s not a good bet. Henry knows how to please women — how to talk to them, react to them, how and when to touch them.
The problem is that he is — or at any rate seems to be — utterly incapable of making a true connection with any of them.
Though pure fiction, Henry is based on pure fact: From the 1920s until the end of the 1960s, college home economic classes around the country borrowed infants from orphanages to be used as “practice babies.” I kid you not.
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
I had the distinct pleasure of reading Stroke Diaries this past week. Its author, Dr. Olajide Williams, is a dear friend and contributor to this blog. I first met Dr. Willliams (or Jide, pronounced “gee-day”) as a young neurology resident at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. I was in my third year of medical school and rotating through the neurology service.
Michael Pollan has become one of our most important writers about human nutrition. His book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), spelled out why the almost eight billion humans on this planet had better balance what we eat — for our own health and the health of the planet.
This is going to be a quick welcome to 
