Medical Management of Radiation Accidents, Second Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)This title is a must-have for those involved with teaching or researching the topic of "Medical management of radiation accidents." I highly recommend this as an essential text for Medical, Graduate and PhD students studying radiology, physiology, pathology, medical physics, health physics or radiation protection, as well as students pursuing careers in diaster preparedness and diaster management. Well-written and illustrated. Extensive detail of most of the major accidents involving radiation and radioactive material and radiation from machine produced sources. Caution: some of the photographs are graphic and are not intended for those with weak stomaches! This reference contain accounts of accidents that I was not aware of until I read this work. This work has an excellent introduction, and very useful Appendices and a Glossary.

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Although radiation accidents are rare and often complex in nature, they are of great concern not only to the patient and involved medical staff, but to the media and public as well. Yet there are few if any comprehensive publications on the medical management of radiation accidents. Medical Management of Radiation Accidents provides a complete reference for those concerned with radiation accidents nationally as well as abroad. Substantially different from the first edition, which dealt predominantly with radiation accident experiences in the United States, this updated and revised Second Edition represents an international cooperative effort that reflects current international approaches and experiences related to the medical management of radiation accidents. It is organized into areas that include:
the fundamental aspects, medical characteristics, and classification of radiation accidents
aspects of radiation on the entire body and specific tissues
the history of accidents throughout the world
a general overview of certain types of accidents with specific examples
a follow-up of persons accidentally exposed to radiation with considerations related to epidemiological studies and a few selected examples
radiation protection and dosimetry issues, psychological considerations, and accidental exposure of pregnant females.The majority of this text is a Russian-United States effort; however, it includes work from authors from Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Japan, and Peru.

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The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan Review

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(More customer reviews)Historian Ann Janetta has taken the stories of the conquest of smallpox, one of the worst plagues of humanity until Edward Jenner invented vaccination, and the story of a nation living in splendid isolation, and woven the two into a fascinating tale. I was totally unaware of the way in which efforts to introduce cowpox into Japan (a frustratingly slow process) helped prepare that nation to vault onto the world stage following the Meiji restoration. This volume is more than a wonderful exercise in historical scholarship, as it should serve as a goldmine for those interested in cultural evolution. It reflects on such key topics as the importance of individuals and networks in promoting that evolution, as well as the promoting and retarding functions of institutions. It clearly shows, in the spirit of Montesquieu and Jared Diamond, the way features of the natural world -- in this case a highly lethal virus, a related virus that was difficult to transport, and a nation occupying an isolated archipelago -- can influence human affairs as much as any king or president. Besides being a gold mine for those interested in Japanese history or in understanding cultural evolution, it's just plain engrossing. Janetta has done us all a great favor.

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In Japan, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, smallpox claimed the lives of an estimated twenty percent of all children born-most of them before the age of five. When the apathetic Tokugawa shogunate failed to respond to this health crisis, Japanese physicians, learned in Western medicine and medical technology, became the primary disseminators of Jennerian vaccination-a new medical technology to prevent smallpox. Tracing its origins from rural England, Jannetta investigates the transmission of Jennerian vaccination, via various foreign and domestic networks, to and throughout pre-Meiji Japan. Relying on Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and English sources, the book treats Japanese physicians as leading agents of social and institutional change, showing how they used traditional strategies involving scholarship, marriage, and adoption to forge new local, national, and international networks in the first half of the nineteenth century. With an interesting parallel to the recent SARS crisis, The Vaccinators details the appalling cost of Japan's almost three-hundred-year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval.

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Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle Review

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(More customer reviews)When I was a mere eleven years old, my parents noticed my brother attempting to smuggle a pitcher of water up to his bedroom. He admitted that he had been drinking a lot of late, and my parents became alarmed. Rushing him off to the hospital he was quickly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It was a strange and frightening time for the whole family, and I read everything I could on the disease to get an understanding of what was happening to my brother.
This book, takes the reader back in time to that amazing transitional time in 1922 when the diagnosis of diabetes changed from being a sentence of death, when the discovery of insulin gave so many people world-wide back their lives. It looks at the victims of the disease, focusing primarily on Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of the Secretary of State of the United States, and looks at the researchers whose activities resulted in the most important breakthrough in the treatment of the disease.
First off, I must agree that this book does take the barebones story of what happened in 1922 and before, fleshes it out with a good deal of "imagined" detail. Therefore this book is probably not terribly useful to someone who wants a reliable and scholarly history.
What this book is is more of what I would call a "popular history," that is, a book written to tell the story of the discovery of insulin, but in an entertaining and engaging manner. I for one found this to be a very informative and entertaining book. The early part that dealt with what families went through before the discovery of insulin was quite literally heartbreaking. And I must admit that when I got to the part where peoples lives were being returned to them (as opposed to living in a concentration camp-like sanitarium), I quite literally got tears in my eyes.
Yes, I really enjoyed this book, and am very glad that I read it. As someone at least somewhat knowledgeable about diabetes, I was interested to learn about what diabetes was like before there was insulin, and how much better things are today. I don't hesitate to recommend this book.

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