A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

A New York Times nonfiction bestseller, which is not necessarily an indicator of quality.

I read this book because while looking up something else entirely, I came across a review mentioning that it concludes with a very raw and honest account of the author's mental health issues. I'm not much interested in longevity, but I'm very interested in raw and honest accounts of mental health issues. I checked out a copy intending to only read the last chapter, but after I read that (which is as described) I got curious, went back to the beginning, and read the whole thing.

Attia is a doctor with a podcast. Outlive has some interesting/useful material, but also a distinct whiff of wealthy techbro who hangs out and creates startups with other wealthy techbros. Attia mentions a friend of his in a way that made me feel certain that the friend was a deeply obnoxious wealthy techbro, so I looked up the friend and discovered that he wrote this book:



Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women. It’s the wisdom Tim used to gain 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time.

• How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
• How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
• How to triple testosterone and double sperm count

How much would you guys pay me to read and review the "turn into a testosterone-fueled orgasmatron muscleman in 4 hours" book?)

Here is a short summary of Outlive: Most doctors do Medicine 2.0, which is focused on treatment. Attia advocates Medicine 3.0, which is focused on prevention. He's interested in staying healthy and happy into old age, not in old age regardless of health and happiness. If you can avoid infectious diseases and violence/accidents, most morbidity and mortality nowadays is caused by four categories of diseases: cancer, heart disease/stroke, neurodegenerative disease (like dementia), and Type 2 diabetes/metabolic issues. Mortality and morbidity from those is often preventable or delayable, though more for heart disease and diabetes than the other two.

The first part of the book is a deep dive into those four conditions and their causes. While I and probably you know the general overview, he also drops a bunch of little bits of information that I was not already aware of, and when I looked up the new bits, I found that while he has his opinions, he was not just making them up. (Just making up stuff is a significant problem in health literature.) He's not a weight loss evangelist, and he admits that there's a lot of genetic and random/unknown factors involved in these diseases, so the book came across as a bit less victim-blaming than these sorts of books usually do.

The second part of the book is his advice on how to prevent/delay those diseases, and how to live to an old age while staying healthy. Imagine whacking a pinata and having advice spray out in a mix of good, possibly good, a good idea in theory but impossible unless you are his personal patient and very wealthy and have unlimited time on your hands and no disabilities or chronic illnesses, probably batshit, and so vague as to be completely useless. So that was a wild ride.

His section on diet has some good points (different people have different dietary needs) but others that are dubious (we should cut calories but also eat WAY more protein) and his method for figuring out what your personal dietary needs are is impossible for most people (experiment with your diet and use extensive blood tests, continuous glucose monitoring, DEXA scans, and other fancy stuff to see how you react). I appreciated that he was honest about how little we really know about the relationship of diet to health, and how complex it is. He says he used to be really sold on various types of fasting but has now decided that it's mostly not worth it as you lose too much muscle mass. He's agnostic on keto.

What he's most sold on is exercise. I liked this aspect of the book, as I enjoy exercise so it was pleasing to have him tell me that regardless of my crummy genes and fondness for fresh-baked bread, I might live to a very healthy old age by doing activities I enjoy anyway. He had some specific tips on types of exercise that I will probably try out at some point. (TOE YOGA.) Finally, he suggested figuring out what physical activities you want to be able to do when you're in your 80s, and focus on maintaining the skills and strength you need for those specifically. This seems very reasonable.

However, he could not resist a long foray into "a good idea in theory but impossible for most people," which was that since aging causes a loss of physical capacity in fairly predictable ways, if you want to be strong in old age, you need to get exceptionally strong now. If you want to lift 40lbs when you're eighty and you statistically lose 50% of lifting capacity by then, you can't just work on lifting 40 lbs now, you need to work up to lifting 80lbs now.

He goes on to advocate preventing age-related decline by aiming to hit the top 10% of the capability of people 20 years younger than you, so as you age you'll be declining from a much higher point. This is a brilliant idea if you're independently wealthy, have lots of time on your hands, and also have outstanding athletic potential. Otherwise, not very practical. To say the least.

He really underestimates the issue of unpredictable injuries or illnesses. He says you can avoid training injuries by learning "stability," which is tautologically defined as the ability to exercise without injuring yourself. This is good in theory but even if you could get the training he suggests which is only via a specific and no doubt wildly expensive personal trainer, no type or amount of training is a certain preventative for injuries. To say the least. And that's not even getting into the very common wild card factor of illnesses that can affect your physical fitness.

The last chapter was about how he realized that he was a ragey asshole, was forced to address his childhood trauma, and how he uses DBT to manage his issues. It was indeed raw and honest though WOW do I feel sorry for his wife. He makes very good points on how it's pointless to be focus on physical health if you're ignoring your horrible mental health. But it also had the "impossible for most people" issue in that he did several stints of month-long voluntary inpatient treatment at a fancy private facility and has three private therapists who are all famous in their own right.

Reading the entire book, you get a real sense of him as a person: obsessive, intense, perfectionist, prone to flinging himself into a concept like keto or fasting and then abandoning it with equal fervor. DBT does seem like a good choice for him.

He's probably a good doctor for his patients, because the only people who can afford his $90,000/year fees and would find them worthwhile are the sort of people who can and would follow his advice. But the guy has absolutely no idea what it's like to not have unlimited money, time, and energy to devote to your health. Some of what he advises would be a more practical in countries other than America, but a lot of it is wildly impractical anywhere. Most people are not capable of reaching the top 10% of athleticism of people 20 years younger than them!

I'm fascinated that this is such a big bestseller, because there's such a tiny fraction of the population that could follow his regime. As far as I can tell, his ideal audience is very rich, very athletic techbros who are obsessively dedicated to hacking their health. It's a real population which includes the author, but in a global sense a very small one.

My favorite part of the book is when he tells the story of rapamycin, which I hadn't heard of before and it's WILD. It's used for various purposes, most commonly to prevent organ rejection, but may increase longevity. Attia confesses that he prescribes it off-label to himself and a few of his patients for that purpose. Good luck, medbro! Hope it doesn't give you any of the very long and scary list of side effects noted in its black box warning!

ETA: Forgot to mention that doing 30 minutes of a dry sauna four days a week reduces mortality by 65%. Being immortal is a full-time job.

My internet rabbit hole on pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe and the Guinea Pig Club (WWII aviators who were burned and got reconstructive surgery) produced a remarkable amount of !!! from Wikipedia alone. A number of them had distinctly "you can't make this shit up" lives. (There's also one who possibly did make some shit up.)

For your interest, I present some of my favorite bits.

I had a row with a German.

Tom Gleave

"Gleave was shot down on his first sortie after restoration of his command, on 31 August 1940, and badly burned. Initially treated at Orpington Hospital, he regained consciousness underneath a bed during an air raid. His wife was called to his bedside and asked the heavily bandaged Gleave "what on earth have you been doing with yourself?" "I had a row with a German" was his characteristically laconic reply."



If you click through to just one article, make it this one.

Alois Šiška

This guy's story is incredible from beginning to end. Here's ONE section:

"Šiska was a member of an illegal cell through which he helped Jews and others escape to Poland and later to Hungary. He remained in the republic until the outbreak of war. At that time, fear grew that the Germans would discover a hidden prototype of the Z-XIII aircraft. In order not to fall into their hands, it was decided within the illegal group that the prototype must fly to the Balkans. However, this plan failed.

Together with Alois Bača, they fled across the frozen river Morava to Slovakia, then with the help of a Hungarian pastor, they crossed the Slovak-Hungarian border and continued by train to the border with Yugoslavia. There they were arrested by a Hungarian border guard and imprisoned in Hodmezövasárhely prison for several weeks. After a failed escape attempt, they were deported to the Citadella in Budapest.

Here they were held in harsh conditions together with another hundred and twenty Czechs and a similar number of Poles. An opportunity to escape did not come until 30 March 1940, when Šiška reported to the doctor suffering from scabies. He managed to escape his guards and took a taxi to the French consulate."

Now imagine that sequence of getting captured and imprisoned, then escaping repeating several more times, interspersed with a shipwreck, a lengthy life raft survival situation, and only escaping getting his feet amputated because he seemingly dropped dead.

This line in his Wikipedia entry caused me some confusion when I attempted to search for his memoir: Šiška authored the book No Response KX-B.



The OTHER pilot who flew in combat with two prosthetic legs.

Colin Hodgkinson

This guy had both his legs amputated, then returned to being a fighter pilot! There were at least two men who did this during WWII.

"On 24 November 1943, during a high-altitude weather reconnaissance mission from 11.50, in Amiens area his oxygen supply failed 6 m E. of Hardelot, causing him to crash land in a field. He was dragged from his burning Spitfire by two farm workers, losing an artificial leg in the process. For the next 10 months he was held in Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp, before being repatriated and deemed "no further use to his country". He was again treated by McIndoe and he continued to fly until his release from service in 1946."



On the bright side, a shell severed the control lever and the throttle got stuck on open.

Eric Lock

"On 8 November 1940 his Spitfire was badly damaged during a skirmish with several Bf 109s over Beachy Head in East Sussex. The Spitfire was so badly damaged that Lock crash-landed in a ploughed field, but was able to walk away. On 17 November 1940 No. 41 Squadron attacked a formation of 70 Bf 109s that were top cover for a bomber raid on London. After shooting down one Bf 109, and setting another on fire, Lock's Spitfire was hit by a volley of cannon shells, which severely injured Lock's right arm and both legs.

The rounds also knocked the throttle permanently open by severing the control lever. The open throttle enabled the Spitfire to accelerate swiftly to 400 mph, leaving the Bf 109s in his wake, without Lock having to attempt to operate it with his injured right arm.

At 20,000 feet (6,100 m) he began to descend and with little control and no means of slowing the fighter down, he could not execute a safe landing; being too badly injured to parachute to safety, Lock was in a perilous situation. After losing height to 2,000 feet (610 m), Lock switched the engine off and found a suitable crash site near RAF Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, into which he glided the stricken fighter for a "wheels down" landing.

Lying in the aircraft for some two hours, he was found by two patrolling British Army soldiers and carried two miles (3 km) on an improvised stretcher made of their Enfield rifles and Army issue winter coats—made after instruction from Lock. By this point, Lock had lost so much blood that he was unconscious, and so unable to feel the additional pain of being dropped three times, once into a dyke of water."

Like the war wasn't bad enough.

Jackie Mann.

"Jackie Mann, CBE, DFM was a Royal Air Force fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, who in later life was kidnapped by Islamists in Lebanon in May 1989 and held hostage for more than two years."

A single swipe of a spade.

Richard Pape

"He became a sergeant navigator in a Short Stirling bomber. On a 1941 mission he was shot down close to the German/Dutch border, was twice captured and twice escaped. Following his second capture he was tortured by the Gestapo. He was repatriated by the Germans on health grounds in 1944.

In November of that year he was on a retraining course when he was burnt in a drunken motorcycle accident on the Isle of Man, which led to his being hospitalised at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, for pioneer plastic surgery under Archibald McIndoe: he thus became a member of the Guinea Pig Club."

Also, he was mad at the Beatles.

An Amazon review of his book: Time and time again I thought that what I was reading did not have a ring of truth about it, and in some cases the account was simply unbelievable. A good example of the latter is a story of a fight between two prisoners where one cuts off the other's head with a single swipe of a spade.



Wait for the last line.

Mollie Lentaigne was not a member of the club herself, but a nurse and artist on the medical staff.

"Lentaigne worked as a Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, West Sussex, where her duties included drawing the experimental operations of Archibald McIndoe and his fellow surgeons. She needed to work quickly in the operating theatre and so used pencil but subsequently added ink and colour to some of her work.

Around 300 of Lentaigne's drawings have been preserved at the East Grinstead Museum, as the Mollie Lentaigne Collection. After the surviving Guinea Pig Club members used social media to search for Lentaigne and found her living in Zimbabwe, she returned to East Grinstead in 2013 to be reunited with her work."

She was 93 at the time, and is still alive at the age of 103.

Now THIS is what I read the book for. (Mostly. It also features Barry writing It was only influenza at least thirty times in three chapters. Give it a rest, Barry. Go polish your portrait of William Welch in your bunk.)

In these chapters Barry dissects the absolutely terrible response of the US government to the pandemic, a combination of deliberate inaction, counterproductive action, and false propaganda unequaled until the current pandemic response, which is very strongly resembles.

From neither the White House nor another senior administration post would there come any leadership, any attempt to set priorities, any attempt to deliver resources.

( Read more... )

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

If anyone's wondering why the hell I'm reading about historical pandemics, apart from curiosity, the answer is this: they are proof that this too shall pass.

This book could not be more different from Barry's. Reading them concurrently was a good choice. Kolata's focus is twofold: why the 1918 flu pandemic was so much less written about than pretty much every other pandemic before and since, and the scientific mystery of what it was and how both historical and modern researchers tried to unravel that.

So far, at least, Barry had not touched on the first subject at all and is interested in modern research only insofar as it illuminates what was done by the Great White Men during the pandemic. Conversely, Kolata only mentions the greatness of historical white men to place them in context, noting that Welch was very well-regarded at the time to explain why he was dispatched as an old man to investigate the flu outbreak and why the fact that it alarmed even him was notable.

Kolata starts with her history as a student of microbiology to note that the influenza pandemic was barely touched upon compared to other pandemics she studied, and that she got curious as to why such a huge event seemed comparatively lost to history. Then she plunges straight in to an incredibly whirlwind account of it, which conveys its impact without really explaining the how and why. (Notable to me: Tucson, AZ mandated the wearing of masks by everyone.)

Chapter two is not actually a history of all disease THANK GOD, but a brief history of the chronicling of historical plagues, to point out that there was a noticeable lack of that for the 1918 epidemic. She goes into some detail about how little the 1918 epidemic was chronicled at the time and afterward in relation to its immense impact - the doctors who were central in dealing with it barely mention it in their memoirs, a 500-page of William Welch gives it two paragraphs, etc. She surmises that the reason for this is that it was overshadowed by/subsumed into the trauma of WWI, did not leave a large number of disabled survivors, and vanished after running its course, making it both inviting and easy to not dwell on.

Kolata leaves me wanting historical detail and context, which Barry provides. Barry leaves me wanting modern context and perspective, which Kolata provides.

Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

He was every bit a warrior, and he hunted death.

Barry has a very distinctive, bombastic style. The introduction in particular feels like it should be scored with Beethoven's Ninth. It tells a compelling story, of the beginning of the pandemic, and asserts, bolstered by Goethe quotes because why not, that the pandemic transformed medicine and science worldwide but especially in America.

Barry then plunges into a summary of the entire history of science and medicine in the western world, especially post-colonial America, before plunging even more enthusiastically into an account of the founding of Johns Hopkins and one of its founders, William Welch, on whom Barry seems to have a massive crush.

These hundreds of the world's leading scientists had measured him as coldly and objectively as they measured everything and found him worthy.

His legacy was not objectively measurable [I guess except to those scientists] but it was nonetheless real. It lay in his ability to stir other men's souls.

Barry then goes on and on and on about how charming Welch was. It doesn't really come across, unfortunately. His best friend apparently fall unrequitedly in love with him, they had a huge fight, and Welch never got intimate or even emotionally close to anyone ever again.

Also, he studied in Germany at a time when American medical schools were basically totally useless, unregulated diploma mills. He returned to teach at the newly founded Johns Hopkins, which was the first academically rigorous American medical school, where he charmed everyone in his path - again, this is told not shown. He sure charmed Barry, though!

Barry is clearly a member of the "Great White Men" school of historians.

Takeaways: Johns Hopkins transformed American medicine from completely backward to comparable with Europe. Germ theory at this time was beginning to take precedence over the competing "miasma" and "filth" theories. (Filth theory was so close! Disease really was spread by sewage, rats, fleas, etc. It was just caused by bacteria or viruses carried in filth, not directly by the filth itself.)

Also, Welch was the best. THE BEST.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

A thoughtful, well-researched, and compassionate look at care, both medical and otherwise, for living and dying in old age.

Gawande looks at the history and current state of his subject in America, with some forays into India, which is where his family is from. Unlike most people who pontificate about the good old days and how things are done elsewhere, when he writes about that, he's speaking from both actual history and personal/family experience.

The easy answer to "why is old age horrible in America nowadays" is that old people used to be cared for at home by their families, which was the right way to do it, but nowadays the family is broken/young people are selfish/capitalism is bad, so they're pushed into horrible and unaffordable nursing homes. Well... the part about horrible and unaffordable nursing homes is true. But the rest is more complicated.

Historically, not all old people had families, or families who could care for them; the ones who didn't died in the streets, or in horrifying poorhouses or debtors' prisons. So "the family can and should do it" has never been a complete answer.

Gawande presents an example from his own family of what in some regards is the ideal state of at-home elder care. His great-grandfather lived to be 103, was helped with the care he needed but nobody stopped him from doing what he wanted, and died on a business trip! But, since Gawande is looking at real people rather than imaginary ones, he can also see the problems with this: the old man was still bossing his family around way past the point when they wanted to be able to make their own decisions, and there were a bunch of family problems due to that.

When old people are cared for at home by their family, it often means that the younger people don't get to live their own lives. In Gawande's case, this had the biggest effect on sons who wanted independence, but historically it mostly means that women (typically the youngest daughter) spend their entire lives devoted to a parent. The parents don't necessarily want to live with their kids, either.

He's not saying that all generations living in the same home in perpetuity is always bad, just that it's not necessarily the ideal or best option.

Gawande then explores how assisted living and nursing homes are frequently horrible and treat old people like prisoners, then looks at a number of case studies of homes for old people that are not like that, from the original assisted living that was the ideal of what that should mean, to a nursing home that moved in four cats, two dogs, and one hundred parakeets to cheer things up, to an apartment building with a very devoted manager.

He makes a strong and moving case for the needs of the elderly for both care and independence/choice, including choices that are risky. People shouldn't lose their rights just because they're old.

He also uncovered some fascinating research on how people prioritize their lives. Young people tend to invest in the future, doing things that will produce rewards later, like going to college, working at jobs they don't like to save money, etc. They also tend to look outward: traveling, making new friends, etc. Old people tend to focus on the present: spending time with family and existing friends rather than making new ones, enjoying daily activities rather than special occasion ones.

This is true across cultures, and is also pretty obvious. But Gawande looks at research that digs into why. Conventional wisdom is that old people act that way because their accumulated life experience teaches them what's really important. But it turns out that in fact, it has to do with the perception of how much time you have. When young people get life-threatening illnesses, they start behaving and prioritizing like old people. When you ask old people to imagine what they'd do if their life was extended by twenty years past what they really have, they start prioritizing like young people.

When you think your time is limited, you focus on the present, current loved ones, and daily pleasures. When you think you've got plenty of time left, you focus on the present, meeting new people, and doing new things. Old people aren't wiser in that regard, they're just making choices that make sense under their circumstances - the same as young people are doing.

Note that this isn't all people all the time, obviously. It's just about overall social trends: young people as a group are more likely to behave in X ways, not "all young people are future-focused."

The book also explores end of life care, but I knew more about that going in, and so was more struck by the parts about living in old age rather than dying in it.

Absolutely perfect cover. If you can't see it well, it's a blade of grass (embossed, on the physical book) casting a shadow.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

The memoir of a neurosurgeon, focusing on how dangerous it is for patients, how it's often a complete gamble whether surgery will cure them or kill them (or paralyze them, or leave them in a permanent coma, etc), and how much that gets to the author.

If a book which is largely about the doctor's feelings as opposed to those of his patients, when the catastrophe happened to them rather than to him, annoys you on principle, don't read this. Personally, I liked knowing that there is at least one more doctor in the world who cares what happens to his patients, even if the caring is composed in equal parts of compassion, professional pride, and fear of being publicly shamed.

As that suggests, it's a memoir dedicated to saying how he really feels, whether that's elevated or petty. He spends quite a bit of time on justifiable raging over his hospital's incredibly terrible computer system, which keeps locking up the password so no one can see the scans they need to operate (hilariously, at one point some equally angry person sets the password to fuckyou47 (and then no one can remember if it's 47, 46, 45...), the lack of beds that mean that patients are deprived of food and water all day pending surgery and then the surgery gets canceled, and all the other myriad ways in which health care in England now sucks. (It still sounds about a million times better than health care in America.)

He talks frankly about his mistakes as a surgeon, some of which killed people. This is really a taboo topic, and my hat is off to him for going there.

There's also a lot of fascinating anecdotes about individual patients, and some beautiful writing about surgery, the physical structure of the brain, and the constant paradox of how that one squishy organ is the source of everything that makes us human and able to do things like write books, all of which is a source of wonder to him and one which he conveys very well.

It's definitely worth reading if the subject interests you, but it doesn't quite rise to the level of medical writing that I'd recommend whether the subject interests you or not. (My nominees for the latter are Atul Gawande, Oliver Sacks, and James Herriot.)

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

Dr. Lisa Sanders is the doctor who inspired the TV show House. She is apparently a genius diagnostician and if her waiting list was not three years long, I would have already seen her. Her book is marketed as tales of medical mysteries and their diagnoses, complete with the doctor’s process of diagnosing, which is why I bought it.

Approximately 20% of the book consists of that. The other 80% is her opinion that the physical examination of the patient (as opposed to mechanical scans) has a long history, is very important, is underused and poorly taught, and needs to be taught better and done more. She’s probably right but it was incredibly repetitive. She could have summed up her thoughts on that in one or two chapters, leaving the rest of the book for the stories which is undoubtedly why everyone bought it. Annoyingly not what it says on the tin.

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis

Any recs for books that are actually about diagnosis? (Medical, not psychological; I'm good on the psych front.)

Also, any recs for a book on antibiotics that is 1) about their current use, not their history (I'm familiar with their history), 2) comprehensible to a layperson?

I am particularly interested in learning more about how, after spending my entire life being told that antibiotics have very limited and specific uses and do not cure most things (due to doctors trying to cut down on inappropriate usage) I have recently discovered that, in fact, they have an extremely wide range of uses and "condition responds to antibiotics and, as far as we can tell, to nothing else" is nowhere near as diagnostically useful as I had assumed in narrowing down what that condition might be. For instance, d-cycloserine, an antibiotic normally used to treat tuberculosis, has cognitive effects which may make it useful in the treatment of PTSD.

Ing Hay was a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine (herbal, pulsology) who practiced in a small, primarily white Oregon town from about 1900 to 1948. He got extremely impressive results, by all accounts, and quickly expanded his practice from the Chinese community to everyone in the vicinity, and eventually became so sought after that people starting traveling to see him. He even sometimes treated patients long-distance, via letters and packages of medicine!

(Sherwood: his predecessor, also a Chinese herbal doctor, was “Doc Lee.”)

This slim book gives a reasonable précis of his story, and that of his business partner, Lung On. The latter sounds like quite a character as well. Unlike Ing Hay, he spoke fluent English, dressed in western clothes, and apparently had not-particularly-discreet affairs with white women. Because of their barbaric attire and so forth, Lung On and a friend of his with similar predilictions jokingly called themselves “Oriental barbarians.”

Though the material is fascinating, the book suffers from a dry writing style and a lack of background and investigation. It’s very much “just the facts,” without much follow-up into their background and context. A reader unfamiliar with the period would need an explanation of the Chinese Exclusion Act (alluded to but not detailed within); a reader who already knows that sort of basic context, like myself, would have appreciated some explanation of things like, for instance, where Ing Hay was getting his Chinese herbs. (From other Chinese herbalists in San Francisco, who imported them from China. But I had to look online to find that out.)

Interesting history, so-so account.

China Doctor of John Day, Oregon

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis, by Lisa Sanders, a doctor who's the consultant for House (I am sure she is not to blame for its inaccuracies, though), is a solid, readable book about... well, exactly what it says on the tin, but with the most attention paid to the physical exam, which according to Sanders is a dying art in America. I still think the best book on the subject is Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, which reaches the heights of fine literature, but Sanders's book is informative and worth reading if you're interested in the subject.

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis

Arthur E. Hertzler's The Horse and Buggy Doctor (Bison Book) is more of general interest, assuming that medical details don't make you turn green and then faint. He wrote it in 1938, looking back on his long career as an American doctor, and the first chapter looks even farther back, to medicine as it was practiced in his boyhood (the 1880s).

This is well worth reading for two reasons: the content is fascinating and eye-opening, even if you already have a decent background in medical history, and Hertzler's style is unique, oddball, literate, grumpy, and vivid. He has a way with deliberately stilted and roundabout phrasing that cracked me up.

To return to the female complaints. One may divide them into two general classes: the female complaints and the male complaints. The former include those due to maladjustments between the biologic and the ethical. Male complaints, on the other hand, are those in which man is the aggravating factor or, maybe, the regressive factor. These are subtle things which only doctors can hope to understand.

...

The more intimate relations between doctor and patient have never before been discussed in print, but I am going to come nearer to doing so than has yet been done. Only an old doctor who has lived with people knows this relationship…. The more nearly the doctor's experience of life has paralleled the patient's before him, the better he is able to understand that patient. The tragedies of literature are silly things; they must be made simple and obvious or else they will not be understood. Shakespeare wrote tragedies out of his imagination, not from experience. They are foolish, because he had not seen life in the raw. Tragedies cannot be written. They are inarticulate.

I wish every parent considering not vaccinating their child was obliged to read the first chapter, in which he relates how common it was for children to die of now-preventable diseases; one family had nine of ten children die of diptheria. He proceeds to explain exactly what death by diptheria looks like. I already knew this, but his description brings it to horrifying life.

Not all of the book is that intense, and much of it is quite funny. If you can bear reading about death and gross procedures, I recommend it.