Here are 100 books that Panacea fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a college professor who has taught biology and anatomy & physiology, I have a unique insight into the mysteries of the human body and how existing and emerging viruses can wreak havoc on the world’s populations. In light of the COVID pandemic that killed millions and
the threat of older and increasingly virulent pathogens, I find it terrifying that viruses could be unleashed that leave us defenseless. Despite all our advances and knowledge, medical mysteries continue to intrigue us and spark our imaginations. We are drawn to them, now more than ever, hoping that the fiction we read about will not become reality.
From the first chapter, I could not put this book down.
When a lethal and highly transmittable virus turns its victims blue, and the Russians blame America for unleashing a deadly virus, I knew I was about to dive into a true medical thriller. I also thought the timing of this novel was disturbing, reminding me all too well of recent disease outbreaks and then taking me on a journey into a world where plagues and pandemics can easily become commonplace.
To his credit, Lawrence Wright managed to weave science and fiction into a plot that frightened as well as entertained.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—a riveting thriller and “all-too-convincing chronicle of science, espionage, action and speculation” (The Wall Street Journal).
At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will have staggering repercussions. Halfway across the globe, the deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security scrambles to mount a response to the rapidly spreading pandemic leapfrogging around the world, which she believes may be the result of an…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I have been an avid reader for my entire life, as well as someone trained extensively in technology (master’s degree in electrical engineering). About twenty years ago, I became seriously drawn to writing and, quite naturally, gravitated toward technology-centric stories. Reading technology-based stories (novels and short stories) as well as nonfiction scientific articles provides a perpetual source of new ideas. And keeping up with the latest domestic and international news keeps me apprised of all the ways technology affects the world, for better and for worse.
I really enjoyed this book firstly because of the complete plausibility of the scenario, an extraterrestrial pathogen that comes to earth about which we are powerless to do anything.
Crichton’s medical background is on solid display here, and it is intriguing to experience the author’s very first fiction effort, knowing, as we do, the many great stories to come in the ensuing years (Jurassic Park, etc.). I also very much enjoyed the idea of a group of talented people from a wide range of disciplines working together to tackle a challenge of immense importance.
From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.
Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and…
As a researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a college professor who has taught biology and anatomy & physiology, I have a unique insight into the mysteries of the human body and how existing and emerging viruses can wreak havoc on the world’s populations. In light of the COVID pandemic that killed millions and
the threat of older and increasingly virulent pathogens, I find it terrifying that viruses could be unleashed that leave us defenseless. Despite all our advances and knowledge, medical mysteries continue to intrigue us and spark our imaginations. We are drawn to them, now more than ever, hoping that the fiction we read about will not become reality.
It was disturbing for me to think that the melting of Alaskan permafrost could actually unleash a disease that spreads and causes its victims to go mad. But the more I thought about it, the more realistic it seemed. Ebola, after all, was spread the same way, except by unearthing tropical soil.
A doomsday cult, which I love reading about, is involved in a sinister plot, and the world falls into chaos and is on the brink of apocalypse. To my delight, I got it all from this book: conspiracy, thrills, a sinister subplot, and a bit of romance. Tosca Lee has given me a believable and riveting novel that delivered on all levels.
In this frighteningly believable thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tosca Lee, an extinct disease re-emerges from the melting Alaskan permafrost to cause madness in its victims. For recent apocalyptic cult escapee Wynter Roth, it's the end she'd always been told was coming.
When Wynter Roth is turned out of New Earth, a self-contained doomsday cult on the American prairie, she emerges into a world poised on the brink of madness as a mysterious outbreak of rapid early onset dementia spreads across the nation.
As Wynter struggles to start over in a world she's been taught to regard as…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
As a researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a college professor who has taught biology and anatomy & physiology, I have a unique insight into the mysteries of the human body and how existing and emerging viruses can wreak havoc on the world’s populations. In light of the COVID pandemic that killed millions and
the threat of older and increasingly virulent pathogens, I find it terrifying that viruses could be unleashed that leave us defenseless. Despite all our advances and knowledge, medical mysteries continue to intrigue us and spark our imaginations. We are drawn to them, now more than ever, hoping that the fiction we read about will not become reality.
I find it scary that pandemics and viral mutations are becoming more likely than ever.
In this book, a Doomsday Germ has mutated to the point that it is resistant to all known antibiotics, and as a former biomedical researcher, nothing is more frightening to me than knowing that deadly microbes unleashed on mankind are not only possible but probable.
I really like that the author, a physician who knows a thing or two about epidemics and the danger of antibiotic resistance, was adept at bringing me along for the ride, explaining what’s possible with today’s medical advances and the real dangers of crossing the line.
They are the most ruthless enemy we have ever faced. And they are one millionth our size. Deep in an Atlanta research laboratory, the world's deadliest germs lie in wait. Dr Lou Welcome knows only too well the destruction they could unleash in the wrong hands and when a research scientist working on a top-secret case is kidnapped, Lou's fears become reality. Soon Lou is locked in a deadly race, from hospital wards to the top corridors of power, to stop a lethal epidemic breaking out. With his best friend's life in the balance, Lou must confront his own demons…
My research and writing in the field of emergency or disaster management has been focused on the concept of hazard mitigation. This means reducing the impact of disasters, the creation of hazard resilient and sustainable communities, and the application of scientific and technical expertise to the task. We all live in a world where it has become more important than ever to make intelligent decisions driven by a comprehension of the properties of the physical universe. It is also a world in which economic self-interest and political interests may impede that idealistic goal. I have a sense of urgency about reducing the efficacy of such impediments.
Barry’s dramatic historical account of the 1918 influenza pandemic has been called “fascinating,” “brilliant,” “sobering,” and “terrifying” by numerous reviewers.
It is a piece of history, the worst public health disaster in the century before COVID-19, that should have helped succeeding generations to take pandemic preparedness more seriously. It should have enhanced our understanding that during such a crisis, science must lead the way. Despite all that we did learn from the great influenza of 1918, we were unable to avoid many of the mistakes made when our leaders too often shunned the advice of science and made the COVID-19 pandemic political.
This book informed and influenced me greatly. It inspired me to see the need for and the importance of recording and learning from our experiences a century later.
At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, "The Great Influenza"…
I’ve been interested in medicine and how stories influence the decisions that people make for as long as I can remember. Watching family and friends make choices about their own healthcare was always fascinated to me and I was always curious as to why some narratives had more staying power than others. After getting my BA in history, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who suggested that I study folklore. I ended up with both a MA and PhD in folklore and became a professor who studies the intersection of folklore and how it affects the medical decisions we all make in our own lives and the lives of others.
Emily Martin’s work was some of the first things I read when I wanted to understand how we understand medicine.
There’s such a gap between the health information we’re given and what we actually believe and Martin really covers how Americans have understood the concept of immunity and how we’re influenced by popular culture and the media.
This book is absolutely crucial for understanding both how we look at immunity and understanding how doctors are not free of bias.
Argues that changing attitudes towards sickness and immunity are reflected in other views, such as the trend towards temporary employees who can be let go when no longer needed
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I like to think that I inherited much of this from my analytical “algebraic” mother, who was a nurse and tended to our family finances, and my holistic “geometrical” father, who was a carpenter. It’s probably no accident that my double major in college was in physics and philosophy...and, down the line, that I should develop a focused interest in human brain laterality, where the division between analysis and holism is so prominent.
Utilizing data from split-brain patients (whose left and right cerebral hemispheres had been surgically separated), the authors of this book focus on how our “two minds” yield a unitary consciousness.
This is the book that first lit the fire of inquiry for me. The whole idea was to understand the “integrated” mind by first understanding the minds of individuals that had been divided by severing the corpus callosum (which connected their two cerebral hemispheres) in order to alleviate medically intractable epilepsy.
It was suggested that in such individuals, their “minds” were divided as well. Yet some later studies did suggest that some intercommunication (through other channels) did survive.
In this book we are trying to illuminate the persistent and nag ging questions of how mind, life, and the essence of being relate to brain mechanisms. We do that not because we have a commit ment to bear witness to the boring issue of reductionism but be cause we want to know more about what it's all about. How, in deed, does the brain work? How does it allow us to love, hate, see, cry, suffer, and ultimately understand Kepler's laws? We try to uncover clues to these staggering questions by con sidering the results of our studies on…
I love learning about how the world we know came to be the way it is. That’s another way of saying I love history. But not the dry, boring history we all remember from school. I want to know more about the entrepreneurial risk-takers, eccentric inventors, and strange circumstances that somehow shaped the world we know today. I want to be fascinated. What’s more, I want to laugh and be entertained while I’m reading and learning. I want every page to reward my attention with some amazing fact or a hearty laugh. That’s what the books on my list do. I hope you love them as much as I have!
Sure, today, we have MRIs, replacement artificial joints (even entire limbs), and medicine cabinets filled with pharmaceuticals to cure our aches and sniffles. But such wasn’t always the case. To get here, doctors once advised our forebears to apply weasels to their foreheads to relieve headaches and wear radioactive underpants to increase virility. And that’s just for starters.
I love books that shed light on the weird and winding path that led us to the present—and this one sits at the top of my list because the history is told with insight (one of the authors is a medical doctor) and charming humor. Laughter is indeed the best medicine!
A compelling, often hilarious and occasionally horrifying exploration of how modern medicine came to be!
Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not. But for thousands of years, people have done things like this—and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare. And some of the…
Vivian Nutton is an emeritus professor of the History of Medicine at UCL and has written extensively on the pre-modern history of medicine. He has lectured around the world and held posts in Cambridge and Moscow as well as the USA. His many books include editions and translations of Galen as well as a major survey of Greek and Roman Medicine, and he is currently writing a history of medicine in the Late Renaissance.
This series of essays by a humane physician-historian who first attracted me to medical history examines basic ideas in medicine across centuries and cultures. Published when the author was almost a hundred, it raises important questions about medical ethics and the place of medicine in society from the Greeks onwards.
Over the course of a career spanning most of the twentieth century, distinguished historian Owsei Temkin has argued passionately for the necessity of chronicling and analyzing the history of medicine. The essays presented in "On Second Thought" and Other Essays in the History of Medicine and Science span Dr. Temkin's career, bringing together new pieces and many previously unavailable outside the journals in which they were originally published. Here the reader will find new thoughts and ideas that deviate from Dr. Temkin's earlier beliefs and reflect a lifetime of research into the historical and ethical foundations of modern medicine. Dr.…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have an annoying habit of figuring out why someone says or believes what they do—and think that is more interesting than their actual ‘truth’. I try to keep this in check during social events (it can make for painful dinner table conversations if I go too far). Still, it means the general take on the medical humanities (and I’d put all the books below in that wide category) is something I’m passionate about. Why do we believe what we do about health? About disease? About the body? And why do we think medical doctors have the truth for us?
Everything is relative…and this book makes me feel like a normal person. Ivan Illich is one of the 20th century’s great thinkers (google him), and he has inspired many of the current critical studies fields that are gaining headway in the academy.
He was a man of principles. In this book, he lays out his principled reasons for why our current medical industrial complex in the West is making us unhealthy and unhappy. And what an alternative would look like. You did google him, right? So, you know what that alternative made him look like in the end…
"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health." This is the opening statement and basic contention of Ivan Illich's searing social critique. In Limits to Medicine Ivan Illich has enlarged on this theme of disabling social services, schools, and transport, which have become, through over-industrialization, harmful to man. In this radical contribution to social thinking Illich decimates the myth of the magic of the medical profession.
