"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first 'immortal' human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...

Extraordinary changes are taking place in American medicine today. Driven by new scientific evidence, doctors are coming to understand that treating the body alone is not enough; the mind can also play a critical role in the healing process. Many physicians are embracing a more holistic form of healthcare, seeking to heal the whole person. Treatments once considered fringe, including visualization, meditation and hypnosis, are being prescribed alongside...

Bleed, Blister, Puke, and Purge exposes the extraordinary practices and major players of American medical history, from the colonial era to the late 1800s.

"In turn heartbreaking, irreverent, moving and at times raucously humorous; one of the nation's leading pediatric researchers recounts his first years as a newly minted, stuggling, and insecure doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A graduate of a state university medical school, Scott Rivkees was competing with elite students from some of the most prestigious schools in the country. Nervous and uncertain, he worked unholy hours with...

"In 1846, a young surgeon, J. Marion Sims ("The Father of Gynecology"), began several years of experimental surgeries on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha ("The Mother of Gynecology"). This series of procedures--performed without anesthesia and resulting in Anarcha's so-called "cure"-- forever altered the path of women's health. Despite brutal practices and failed techniques, Sims proclaimed himself the curer of obstetric fistula, a horrific...

It tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line.