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Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.
It has been a difficult, sometimes painful, story to tell in its entirety, but I have done my best to be accurate both in facts and in dates, for I feel that l owe the truth to the many who have become valued acquaintances, and sometimes friends. All these have constantly requested more news of my "Green Dwelling" and my discovery of a fatal neurological disease previously unknown to Western medicine. This book is for them, in lieu of letters that I ought to have written and did not. It is also my concern to produce innocent amusement, unrestricted by canon or precedent, for those who require some relaxation from the fatigue generated by so many parasitic forms of life in this less than perfect world. My peers, the medical scientists, who read this will realize that this book is neither a scientific treatise, nor a balance-sheet of all the achievements and failures of medical science, but a presentation of the major implications of the factors that continually determine our medical ethics - including some of the less prizeworthy drawbacks.
Perhaps the best-documented epidemic in the history of medicine, kuru has been studied for more than fifty years by international investigators from medicine and the human sciences. This significantly revised edition of the landmark anthropological classic Kuru Sorcery brings up to date the anthropological contribution to understanding disease, the medical research that resulted in two medical Nobel Prizes, and the views of the Fore people who endured the epidemic and who still believe that sorcerers, rather than cannibalism, caused kuru. The kuru epidemic serves as a prism through which to see how Fore notions of disease causation bring into single focus their views about the body, the world of social and spiritual relations, and changes in economic and political conditions-aspects of thought and behaviour that Western medicine keeps separate.
This riveting account of medical detective work traces the story of kuru, a fatal brain disease, and the pioneering scientists who spent decades searching for its cause and cure. Winner, William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine Winner, Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science Winner, General History Award, New South Wales Premier's History Awards When whites first encountered the Fore people in the isolated highlands of colonial New Guinea during the 1940s and 1950s, they found a people in the grip of a bizarre epidemic. Women and children succumbed to muscle weakness, uncontrollable tremors, and lack of coordination, until death inevitably su...
In 1957, European discovery of an unknown, fatal disease known locally as “kuru,” afflicting the remote Fore people of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea prompted an influx of European medical investigators into the region. The early years of the inquiry were fraught as rival teams of investigators jostled for control over the research. In an attempt to resolve the friction, in 1963 the Australian Administrators of New Guinea appointed New Zealand neurologist, Richard Hornabrook, Chief Clinical Investigator of kuru, based at the remote Eastern Highland Patrol Post of Okapa. The family’s two years at the settlement offer fascinating insights into Hornabrook’s work investigating kuru and life on a remote Patrol Post inhabited by a dozen adult Europeans, an Australian Assistant Commissioner, and contingent of local police.
Over 1600 entries, generally to literature written between 1957-1974. Covers books, journal articles, and unpublished reports. Includes basic bibliography (arranged by authors) and supplements in related fields, i.e., social and physical anthropology, linguistics, and natural history. Author index.
These eighty-two letters speak for themselves. They document the discovery and the origins and pursuance of the first year of study of kuru in great detail and should serve to dispel any misconceptions about who did what, and answer many hows, whens, and whys about the early field work and laboratory investigations on kuru. Above all, the publication of these letters is a tribute to the late Dr. Joseph E. Smadel who had so much to do with the first year of our kuru investigation, and through whom the laboratory at the National Institutes of Health became our base, where we were able to demonstrate the slow virus etiology of kuru, the first proved slow virus infection of man.
What is Kuru? A Deadly First Human Prion (misfolded proteins)Disease. Kuru is an incurable and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Kuru, the first human prion disease was transmitted to chimpanzees by D. Carleton Gajdusek (1923–2008). The discovery of kuru opened new vistas of human medicine and was pivotal in the subsequent transmission of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, as well as the relevance that bovine spongiform encephalopathy had for transmission to humans. The transmission of kuru was one of the greatest contributions to biomedical sciences of the 20th century. An attempt is made here to summarize the history of this seminal discovery, epidemiology, clinical picture, neuropathology, investigations, management, complications, prognosis and the descriptions of electron microscopy and confocal microscopy of kuru amyloid plaques along with several illustrations for better understanding of a quaint but interesting entity. …Dr. H. K. Saboowala. M.B.(Bom) .M.R.S.H.(London).