Washington University Press Search Results Page

The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence

Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874

By Robert T. Boyd

In the late 1700s when European colonizers arrived on the Northwest Coast, they reported the presence of vigorous, diverse cultures—Tlingit, Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Coast Salish, and Chinookan—with a population conservatively estimated at more...

Healing with Poisons

Potent Medicines in Medieval China

By Yan Liu

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013

At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything from...

The Organic Profit

Rodale and the Making of Marketplace Environmentalism

By Andrew N. Case. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Where did the curious idea of buying one’s way to sustainability come from? In no small part, the answer lies in the story of entrepreneurial health reformer J. I. Rodale, his son Robert Rodale, and...

Medicine and Memory in Tibet

Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform

By Theresia Hofer

Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295743004

Only fifty years ago, Tibetan medicine, now seen in China as a vibrant aspect of Tibetan culture, was considered a feudal vestige to be eliminated through government-led social transformation. Medicine and Memory...

High

Drugs, Desire, and a Nation of Users

By Ingrid Walker

Whether drinking Red Bull, relieving chronic pain with oxycodone, or experimenting with Ecstasy, Americans participate in a culture of self-medication, using psychoactive substances to enhance or manage our moods. A “drug-free America” seems to be...

A Family History of Illness

Memory as Medicine

By Brett L. Walker

While in the ICU with a near-fatal case of pneumonia, Brett Walker was asked, “Do you have a family history of illness?”—a standard and deceptively simple question that for Walker, a professional historian, took on...

Tracing Autism

Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and the Affective Labor of Neuroscience

By Des Fitzgerald

In Tracing Autism, Des Fitzgerald offers an up-close account of the search for a neurological explanation of autism. As autism has gained cultural prominence with more diagnoses and more controversy, its biological causes remain elusive.

Through...

Indian Blood

HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco's Two-Spirit Community

By Andrew J. Jolivette

Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary "Lammy" Award in LGBTQ Studies

The first book to examine the correlation between mixed-race identity and HIV/AIDS among Native American gay men and transgendered people, Indian Blood provides an analysis...

Resuscitate!

How Your Community Can Improve Survival from Sudden Cardiac Arrest

By Mickey S. Eisenberg, M.D.

Sudden cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death among adults, yet it need not be fatal. Though survival in most communities is very poor, a few communities achieve rates as high as 50%. Why...

Living with a Brother or Sister with Special Needs

A Book for Sibs

By Donald Meyer and Patricia F. Vadasy

Living with a Brother or Sister with Special Needs focuses on the intensity of emotions that brothers and sisters experience when they have a sibling with special needs, and the hard questions they ask: What...

An Integrative Metaregression Framework for Descriptive Epidemiology

By Abraham D. Flaxman, Theo Vos, Christopher J.L. Murray

To provide the tools and knowledge needed in efforts to improve the health of the world’s populations, researchers collaborated on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010. The study produced comprehensive...

The Clinic and Elsewhere

Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy

By Todd Meyers

Despite increasingly nuanced understandings of the neurobiology of addiction and a greater appreciation of the social and economic conditions that allow drug dependency to persist, there remain many unknowns regarding the individual experience of substance...

Personal Information Management

By William P. Jones, Jaime Teevan

In an ideal world, everyone would always have the right information, in the right form, with the right context, right when they needed it. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. This book...

Helping Your Child Recover from Sexual Abuse

By Caren Adams and Jennifer J. Fay

The sexual abuse of a child creates a devastating family crisis. Parents want to know what to do and say to help their child, both immediately and in the long term. Helping your Child Recover...

Assessing and Managing Behavior Disabilities

By Norris G. Haring

Becoming Citizens

Family Life and the Politics of Disability

By Susan Schwartzenberg

Following the Second World War, a generation of Seattle parents went against conventional medical wisdom and chose to bring up their children with developmental disabilities in the community. This book presents a stunning visual narrative...

The Challenge of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Overcoming Secondary Disabilities

By Ann Streissguth, Jonathan Kanter, Mike Lowry, Michael Dorris

In the first book of its kind, experts describe how to help people with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. A summary of recent findings and recommendations is presented by the team who conducted the largest study ever...

When a Child Dies

How Pediatric Physicians and Nurses Cope

By Robert S. McKelvey

How is it possible for practitioners of the healing arts to cope with the deaths of children and the devastating grief of their families? Physician Robert McKelvey looks squarely at this painful question and gets...

The Art of Healing Latinos

Firsthand Accounts from Physicians and Other Health Advocates

By David E. Cordova, Roberto Chiprut

The Art of Healing Latinos collects the wisdom of health professionals who have particular expertise in treating Latino patients. Their knowledge comes from many years of service in fields that range from pediatrics to geriatrics,...

Hope on the Hill

The First Century of Seattle Children's Hospital

By Walt Crowley and David W. Wilma

In the spring of 1898, a 5-year-old Seattle boy named Willis Clise suffered and eventually died of what was called “inflammatory rheumatism.” There was no treatment,and no doctor west of Philadelphia who specialized in childhood...