Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century [Hardcover]
Author: Kevin Fong M.D. | Language: English | ISBN: 1594204705 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century
Direct download links available Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Drawing on his own experience as an anesthesiologist, intensive care expert, and NASA adviser, Dr. Kevin Fong examines how cuttingedge medicine pushes the envelope of human survival by studying the human body’s response when tested by physical extremes. Extreme Medicine explores different limits of endurance and the lens each offers on one of the systems of the body. The challenges of Arctic exploration created opportunities for breakthroughs in open heart surgery; battlefield doctors pioneered techniques for skin grafts, heart surgery, and trauma care; underwater and outer space exploration have revolutionized our understanding of breathing, gravity, and much more. Avant-garde medicine is fundamentally changing our ideas about the nature of life and death.
Through astonishing accounts of extraordinary events and pioneering medicine, Fong illustrates the sheer audacity of medical practice at extreme limits, where human life is balanced on a knife’s edge. Extreme Medicine is a gripping debut about the science of healing, but also about exploration in its broadest sense—and about how, by probing the very limits of our biology, we may ultimately return with a better appreciation of how our bodies work, of what life is, and what it means to be human. Books with free ebook downloads available Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century
Direct download links available Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Anesthesiologist, intensive care expert, and NASA adviser Kevin Fong explores how physical extremes push human limits and spawn incredible medical breakthroughs
Little more than one hundred years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world’s environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the twentieth century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremis, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer. Doctors, scientists, and explorers all share a defining trait: they push on in the face of grim odds. Because of their extreme exploration we not only understand our physiology better; we have also made enormous strides in the science of healing.
Little more than one hundred years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world’s environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the twentieth century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremis, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer. Doctors, scientists, and explorers all share a defining trait: they push on in the face of grim odds. Because of their extreme exploration we not only understand our physiology better; we have also made enormous strides in the science of healing.
Drawing on his own experience as an anesthesiologist, intensive care expert, and NASA adviser, Dr. Kevin Fong examines how cuttingedge medicine pushes the envelope of human survival by studying the human body’s response when tested by physical extremes. Extreme Medicine explores different limits of endurance and the lens each offers on one of the systems of the body. The challenges of Arctic exploration created opportunities for breakthroughs in open heart surgery; battlefield doctors pioneered techniques for skin grafts, heart surgery, and trauma care; underwater and outer space exploration have revolutionized our understanding of breathing, gravity, and much more. Avant-garde medicine is fundamentally changing our ideas about the nature of life and death.
Through astonishing accounts of extraordinary events and pioneering medicine, Fong illustrates the sheer audacity of medical practice at extreme limits, where human life is balanced on a knife’s edge. Extreme Medicine is a gripping debut about the science of healing, but also about exploration in its broadest sense—and about how, by probing the very limits of our biology, we may ultimately return with a better appreciation of how our bodies work, of what life is, and what it means to be human.
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (February 6, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594204705
- ISBN-13: 978-1594204708
- Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #18 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Medicine > Special Topics > History
- #58 in Books > History > World > Expeditions & Discoveries
- #63 in Books > Medical Books > History
Dr. Kevin Fong is a British physician who also holds degrees in astrophysics and engineering. In "Extreme Medicine," he surveys how medical practitioners expanded the frontiers of survival under extreme conditions throughout the twentieth century. Fong provides riveting anecdotes about pioneering procedures, including artificial life support, that paved the way for breakthroughs that were once considered unattainable. Dr. Fong alludes to, but does not discuss extensively, the ethical considerations of using experimental procedures on patients and sustaining human life artificially.
This well-researched and technical work of non-fiction is divided into chapters: "Ice," "Fire," "Heart," "Trauma," "Intensive Care," "Water," "Orbit," "Mars," and "Final Frontiers." If you are not an outer space enthusiast, you may less than entranced by Fong's description of the physiological changes that occur when astronauts leave Earth's atmosphere. Certainly, the chapter on Mars, while interesting, is a too long and detailed. Much more relevant to those of us who are firmly tethered to terra firma are the sections that explore polio, SARS, disfiguring burns, heart failure, and other life-threatening conditions. Through trial and error, physicians learned from their early missteps and came up with new ways of solving old problems. They gradually developed techniques to save and/or extend lives when, in the past, there would have been little or no hope.
Much of what Fong tells us is not new, since most of us are aware that initiatives involving improved sanitation, vaccinations, blood transfusions, and the use of antibiotics to combat infections have led to greater longevity.
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