Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted [Kindle Edition]
Author: Gerald Imber | Language: English | ISBN: B003YFJ5PY | Format: PDF, EPUB
Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted
Direct download links available Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Direct download links available Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
A major new biography of the doctor who invented modern surgery. Brilliant, driven, but haunted by demons, William Stewart Halsted took surgery from a horrific, dangerous practice to what we now know as a lifesaving art.
Halsted was born to wealth and privilege in New York City in the mid-1800s. He attended the finest schools, but he was a mediocre student. His academic interests blossomed at medical school and he quickly became a celebrated surgeon. Experimenting with cocaine as a local anesthetic, he became addicted. He was hospitalized and treated with morphine to control his craving for cocaine. For the remaining 40 years of his life he was addicted to both drugs.
Halsted resurrected his career at Johns Hopkins, where he became the first chief of surgery. Among his accomplishments, he introduced the residency training system, the use of sterile gloves, the first successful hernia repair, radical mastectomy, fine silk sutures, and anatomically correct surgical technique. Halsted is without doubt the father of modern surgery, and his eccentric behavior, unusual lifestyle, and counterintuitive productivity in the face of lifelong addiction make his story unusually compelling.
Gerald Imber, a renowned surgeon himself, evokes Halsted’s extraordinary life and achievements and places them squarely in the historical and social context of the late 19th century. The result is an illuminating biography of a complex and troubled man, whose genius we continue to benefit from today.
Direct download links available for Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted [Kindle Edition] - File Size: 1555 KB
- Print Length: 405 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1607146274
- Publisher: Kaplan Trade; 1 edition (May 15, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003YFJ5PY
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,357 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Specialties > Surgery
- #23 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Special Topics > History
- #67 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Medical
"Genius on the Edge" is an interesting book describing the medical developments (especially in surgery) during the period of about 1846 to 1922. The first third of the book mainly focused on what surgery was like before this period, on the developments that occurred from 1846 to 1889, and how they affected Halsted's medical training and prompted his surgical innovations. The rest of the book was more a series of short biographies of men who worked with Halsted and the developments they (and he) brought to the practice of surgery from 1889-1922. It also covered Halsted's marriage and how he lived.
The author didn't assume that the reader was familiar with medical terms and so concisely worked that information in as was needed to understand the innovations. He did an excellent job of making the topic fascinating and easy to understand. I found the book a quick read despite the amount of information packed into it. I also liked how the author wove the general technological changes and social setting into the story so we could see how society effected the advances and how Halsted and the others influenced society in turn. While the book mostly focused on American surgery (especially that done at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), the author also brought up related advances over in Europe.
There were only a couple of brief descriptions of actual surgery, so most of the book probably wouldn't bother those who get queasy by descriptions of operations.
Some of the topics covered were: the introduction of general anesthetics, heat sterilization, and antiseptics to make surgery safer. How medical training had been done and how it changed (both in medical school and post-graduate) under the influence of Halsted and his friends at Johns Hopkins.
Genius on the Edge by Dr. Gerald Imber MD
Kaplan Publishing
Title of the Review: Genius Recognized
Reviewed by: Dr. Joseph S. Maresca CPA, CISA
The author, Dr. Gerald Imber, MD does an excellent job of
documenting the life and times of Dr. William S. Halsted MD.
Dr. William Stewart Halsted was educated in New York initially.
He attended Yale and the College of Physicians and Surgeons
at 23rd St. and 4th Av. in NYC.
Scholastically, he graduated in the top 10 of his class
and won $100 in an essay contest for the description of
the arteries of the neck. He worked at
New York Hospital and read extensive surgical
scholarship written in Europe. He held positions at
Blackwell's Island and Emigrant Hospital, although the
workload was staggering .
At an early age, he began to understand the intricacies
of blood group incompatibility. He found that intestinal
anastomosis using fine silk sutures incorporating the submucosal
layer withstood the pressures of normal bodily functions.
He demonstrated this aspect graphically.
By 1889, rubber sterile gloves were introduced to protect
the skin from irritation. Halsted perfected radical surgery
with extensive fine suturing for breast cancer.
He reconstructed hernia defects in the groin by using muscle
and tough fascial sheath of the oblique muscles of the lower
abdomen to reconstruct the inguinal canal floor. Halsted sutured
the muscles and fascia to Poupart's ligament, an anatomical
inguinal ligament that traverses the iliac bone of the pubis.
Strong silk sutures were used to tighten the internal abdominal
ring as well.
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