Venus and tuberculosis

We study the long list of the Enlightener Prize: Books on Medicine

In early June, the Long List of the Enlightener Prize, which is awarded for the best popular science books, became known. This year, 25 books were included in the list. Gorky talks about the first part of the list - about six medical books.

For the first time in the long list of the "Enlightener" there were so many books on medicine. We can say that this is the second boom in medical texts in the Russian book market. The first happened about ten years ago and was connected with the popularity of Dr. House and other medical series. Then, however, mostly various hospital bikes were popular: the memories of doctors and novels about doctors. With a great desire from the literary texts of that period, it was also possible to extract some useful recommendations about what to do for your health and what should not be done in any case. The new wave of medical literature is almost entirely consists of non-fiction. Over the past ten years, the Russian scientific scientist has come a long way and readers are used to believing him.

Peter Talents. 0.05. Evidence medicine from magic to searching for immortality. M.: AST, Corpus, 2019 Content

The history of evidence -based medicine here is represented as an eternal duel between medicine itself and magic. In different periods of human history, the border between them remained quite mobile. In ancient Egypt, “not priests were engaged in treatment, but doctors to Sun”, moreover, the Egyptians, “perhaps the first to unconsciously used the antibiotic produced by mold.” But already in the Middle Ages they treated the devil knows what: “There was a crushed Egyptian mummy with a medicine available only to a wealthy nobility. Like any very expensive medicine, she allegedly cured almost all known ailments. Several medical conferences were devoted to the problem of fake mummies. If you believe the famous surgeon of the 16th century Ambruaz Pare, all mummies in the French market were made of Viselniki bodies stolen from the scaffold. ”

If someone thinks that things are better now, then he is mistaken: talents are held according to homeopathy (this is a “variant of symbolic magic”), by detoxification (unlike homeopathy, which offers real diseases with pills without medicine, detoxification aggressively treats a non-existent problem), finally, on drugs that do not treat absolutely nothing: “in 2012 there are two French doctors They took the work of analyzing research on 4 thousand drugs registered in France and came to the conclusion that only half of the drugs have acceptable evidence of effectiveness. ” The situation in Russia is "at least no better."

In fact, we have a witty written history of medicine with a certain number of useful warnings, which was composed not only by a doctor, but also by a businessman, but at the same time one of the co -founders of the Evolution Foundation. Cautiously evaluate the chances of the success of this book as quite high.

Alexey Paevsky, Anna Khorozhaya. Generally a plague! The history of diseases from fever to Parkinson. M.: AST, 2018 Content

Another history of medicine, this time told through the history of diseases. The authors are the well -known popularizers of science that lead the Neuronovosti portal. The terrible diseases that are defeated or the chances of infected with which the modern Russian citizen have low (plague, cholera), are adjacent to exotic, but encountered diseases (Legionnaire's disease, Tutrett's syndrome) or those that lie in wait for anyone (Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease). The book of Pashevsky and Horuzhi is equally exciting and useful, and even if you read six books on the history of medicine in a row, it is still able to surprise. For example, you knew that the girl shown in the picture of Sandro Botticelli “Birth of Venus” was sick with tuberculosis and is it easy to establish if you carefully look at the picture?

“Don't you think a few strange Venus pose? The girl’s left shoulder is unnaturally lowered, right? Everything is so. It was this - coupled with an extremely premature death - and made it possible to diagnose the beauty: consumption. She is tuberculosis. You ask which shoulder is related to a respiratory disease? In fact, as the TB specialists - tuberculosis specialists say - there is only only tuberculosis of hair and nails. All the rest of this disease is also striking. The characteristic omission of the shoulder suggests that the girl, in addition to the pulmonary form, also developed bone -consumer tuberculosis, which struck the shoulder belt. ”

And this, of course, is not the only surprise of books. However, the “plague” of the “plague” for victory will carefully evaluate how not very high ones, since we have high -quality, but very traditional in form, ideas and the method of exposing scientific.

Mikhail Poluektov. Sleep riddles. From insan to lethargy. M.: Alpina Non-Fikshn, 2019 Content

The Sochenov Institute-Schoolist tells about the dream. The legend that Leonardo da Vinci was sleeping for 15 minutes every 4 hours, and that was so brilliant, has no documentary evidence. Nevertheless, you can sleep like that and at the same time maintain work capacity-though, after all, only for some time. For health, you need at least 7 hours of sleep, and how much is needed in order to become rich and ingenious, science is unknown. Is it harmful to sleep little?

“Minimum mortality figures were observed among people who slept 7 hours, while for the subsidious 3 hours and less mortality increased by 7-11% (different for women and men).”

But Sonyam should not rejoice, because among those who sleep for more than 8 hours, also increased mortality. However, scientists explain this effect by the fact that the ““ long-play ”group, apparently, people with already available health problems, while their body requires more sleep to restore. Or they turn out to be so unhealthy that they cannot objectively evaluate the time of their sleep and overstate it. ” There is also a story of the appearance of sleep, ways of combating insomnia and, finally, the chapter on dreams, which, alas, are just a reflection of our mental activity.

“The existence of prophetic dreams can be explained by an intuitive conclusion as a consequence of the analysis not only of conscious, but also to unconscious information.”

With unchanging caution, we would call this book one of the main favorites. Still, no matter how talented a popularizer, but a book written by a scientist still has certain advantages over his work. Well, then a dream worries everyone almost more than illness.

Pavel Brand. On the nervous ground: cognitive medical mythology. M.: AST, 2019 Content

The book is an endless dialogue of a little tired, but still a good neurologist with a hypochondric patient. Well, that is, with a person who is infinitely frightened by a sudden attack of the head of the pain and is now honestly trying to discover all the illness known and unknown to science.

“ - I have dizziness (sick, tears, high pressure ...). Apparently a stroke! - Most likely not. Not even at all. ” - The reason for my dizziness is osteochondrosis of the cervical spine! - And here is not ... The neurologist looked at me and appointed many different pills. Now I will recover! - Unfortunately, tablets are not crucial in the treatment of true dizziness. - A high level of cholesterol happens only in full people! - And not at all. It happens in full, thin, high, low, bald and shaggy. "

In principle, an extremely useful book, the author of the article made several important conclusions for himself personally while he read it. Moreover, she also asks quite global questions, after which she wants to revise all her ideas about health.

“If you, by some miracle, managed to avoid the diagnosis of“ vegetovascular dystonia ”, then you definitely will not turn away from spinal osteochondrosis. This diagnosis is so common in our country that I will not be surprised if it suddenly turns out that they suffer from 100 % of the population over 25 years old. A logical question immediately arises: how is it right to consider with pathology what the vast majority suffer from? Maybe this is not a pathology at all, but a variant of the norm? Let's try to answer this question and figure out what kind of diagnosis is and how justified its existence is. ”

We evaluate the chances of Brand’s book to win how good, but still medium. Although the benefits of the book are undoubted.

Mikhail Shifrin. 100 stories from the history of medicine: the greatest discoveries, exploits and crimes in the name of your health and longevity. M.: Alpina Plisher, 2019 Content

If you dial in Google the phrase "Mikhail Shifrin", then the first few dozen links will still lead to articles about Efim Shifrin. Meanwhile, Michael, although not so famous, but also quite worthy: a scientific journalist, an employee of Yandex and the author of questions for teleschers. His book is a process assembled under one cover and a processed collection of SMM newsletters of a medical site. As a result, the story of medicine, told through the biographies of people of both famous and completely unknown: from the French surgeon Ambruuse Parae, who in the 16th century invented modern surgery, to our contemporary, who herself made a cesarean section, and survived and saved the child. It’s not worth reading this book-too many details and details, nevertheless it is clear that it is collected from passages-but for reading periodic, from time to time, it is perfect. The main advantage of Shifrin’s book is to easily imagine a boy or a girl who is flipping through “100 stories”, suddenly caught in the desire to become a doctor. This is very important. And if the jury takes into account this factor, then the chances of winning will be quite high.

Elena Kleschenko. DNA and her man: a brief history of DNA identification. M.: Alpina Non-Fikshn, 2019 Content

The theme of this book is located on the boundaries of medical literature and publications about genetics. It immediately catches the eye that the text is written according to Western canons: each chapter begins with a certain personal story. This can be a researcher who has made an important contribution to the study of DNA, or there may be a story of an ordinary person or a story about a criminal who managed to catch thanks to the latest scientific discoveries. For example, a “killer from the Golden State” is mentioned here, about which Gorky wrote here and here . The book begins with the history of a woman who wanted to find out with the help of a DNA test, who was the father of her child, and in the end found out that he was not his mother. Spoiler: This happens.

“Apparently, when Lydia’s mother was pregnant with her, she wore not one girl, but two dizigate (unentile) twins. The second embryo died, but some of its cells fell into the embryoadii, or in the early stages two embryos merged, and in the future the uniform pregnancy developed normally. As a result, Lydia's blood cells had one genotype, and the cells of the reproductive system - the other. We can say with some stretch that Lydia carried the children like a surrogate mother, and her unborn sister was a biological mother! ”

Despite such amazing stories, Elena Kleshchenko’s chances for victory, we will evaluate how not very high. Still, we have a lot of such books.