Book : Extreme Medicine How Exploration Transformed Medicine

-Titulo Original : Extreme Medicine How Exploration Transformed Medicine In The Twentieth Century

-Fabricante :

Penguin Press

-Descripcion Original:

Fong M.D., Kevin From Booklist Inner space, outer space, and regions in between-this is the sprawling subject matter of a book that celebrates the challenges of discovery. Fong, a physician with a background in astrophysics, engineering, and aerospace medicine, ably identifies the correlations and convergence of exploring extreme environments and predicaments and the human body. For example, he tethers an expedition to the South Pole with forthcoming medical applications of hypothermia. He links the disfiguring burns suffered by WWII aircraft pilots with the development of reconstructive plastic surgery. Fong focuses on the fragility of human physiology and efforts to protect it with advanced life-support systems. Along the way, readers learn about the rise of intensive-care units, human spaceflight, iron lungs and polio, a complete face transplant, and SARS. Exploration of any kind is risky business and at times seems irrational. It requires curiosity, innovation, and resiliency, and it pushes the limits of knowledge, territory, and biology. Fong makes the point that human survival has been and will continue to be closely connected to our compulsion to explore. --Tony Miksanek Review The Washington Post: “Every chapter combines personal stories, dramatic medical history and clear, vivid science writing…Fong’s book presents daring moments in medicine along with lucid explanations of human physiology and of how medical professionals manage to keep people alive or pull them back from the brink. It should appeal to would-be astronauts, outdoor-lovers, mountain climbers, free-divers, armchair explorers, science enthusiasts, those working in the health professions or wondering about such a career-indeed, just about anyone with a heartbeat and a dash of curiosity.” The Wall Street Journal: “In Extreme Medicine, physician Kevin Fong reminds us that virtually everything we take for granted in lifesaving medical intervention was once unthinkable… Dr. Fongs engaging and fast-paced narrative is liberally sprinkled with his own harrowing experiences as a specialist in anesthesia and intensive-care.” Discover: “[Fong] weaves first hand, nail-biting ER experiences with gripping historical narrative as he recounts 100 years of breakthroughs...[Fong] looks forward as well: He offers tantalizing ideas about surviving long-term space travel and other possibilities that await us in our relentless quest to explore.” Mother Jones: “With clear, evocative prose, he takes readers to ocean depths and mountaintops, and also deep within our bodies, in this entertaining exploration of human limits.” Kirkus Reviews (starred): A medical thriller of the first order. Publishers Weekly: [An] eloquent history of how 20th-century science and medicine moved us toward improved survival--and with it a better understanding of life and death...these are thrilling stories that describe the limits of human psychology. Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of Complications, Better, and The Checklist Manifesto: In Extreme Medicine, the ever-intrepid Kevin Fong reveals the fascinating link between geographical exploration and medical innovation, with stories that are as strange and intriguing as they are illuminating. Professor Brian Cox, author of The Quantum Universe:It would be hard to find anyone better qualified to write a book on the limits of human physiology than Dr Kevin Fong. His experiences in human spaceflight at NASA, in frontline medicine, and his deep scientific knowledge, shine through. If you want to know what the human body can take, and why we must continue to push ourselves beyond the limit in the name of exploration, then read this book. The Observer (UK): Anatomy and physiology are elegantly explained, not as abstract theory, but as counterpoint to gripping stories about survival against the odds. Real stories of life and near-death form the compelling backbone of the