Inspirational Reading for Medical Students

Freya Whiteside
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

An essential reading list from Stanford University Press for anyone studying human biology or medicine.

Perlego is growing! We’re proud to now offer titles from Stanford University Press’ wide variety of academic texts. To celebrate, we’ve curated a list perfect for students of medicine and human biology, offering the most enlightening research on new and historical medical subjects.

Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic

Did you know there’s such a thing as oral posture? No? There is, and our ignorance of it is causing an array of dental issues: crowded mouths, crooked teeth, and even breathing difficulties. Rather than accepting quick-fix, aesthetically motivated solutions offered by corrective orthodontic treatment, orthodontist Sandra Kahn and evolutionist Paul Ehrlich set out to investigate the cause of our increasing dental issues and the ways to prevent them. Jaws aims to better our bodily health as a whole by fixing a problem right under our noses.

Enlightened Immunity

Scientific progress is often associated with secular society. We know that enlightenment rebels threw off the shackles of religion to study medicine freely without interference — but how true is this? Paul Ramírez’s medical history of eighteenth century Mexico, struggling with outbreaks of typhus and smallpox, investigates the cultural links between the early prototypes of public health programs, the church, and Enlightenment ideas about medicine. Both a history of Mexico and a history of medicine, this book provides brilliant insight into the development and diffusion of early medical science.

Prozak Diaries

Mental illness are one of the most difficult things to talk about. Besides the stigma often attached to psychiatric diagnoses, the feeling and symptoms of mental illness can be hard to articulate in personal or clinical environments. Orkideh Behrouzan’s ethnographic study of medical discourse in Iran examines how we find the words to discuss our most personal problems, whether those issues are rooted in our individual or collective conscience. Elegantly written and highly analytical, this book finds the intersections between the clinical, the personal, and the language that ties us together.

Forgotten Disease

We like to consider medicine as a neutral science, guided by evidence and untouched by societal biases — but perhaps that isn’t the case. Hilary Smith’s Forgotten Disease reveals the unfair privileging of western medicine through the study of a single disease: foot qi, which became known in the West as beriberi (a vitamin B-1 deficiency). By looking beyond 19th century translations of Chinese medical terms and exploring the vast and varied history behind a single term, Smith shows how language can be used to undermine knowledge collected by other cultures. Thought-provoking and timely in a globalised world.

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Freya Whiteside

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Perlego editor - finding the best books for students to make university hassle free

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