Science and Medical Non-Fiction

What happens when institutional racism and junk forensic science come together? Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington explore this scenario in their book, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: a True Story of Injustice in the American South. After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement agents arrested and convicted two innocent men--Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. By the time they were exonerated in 2008, they had spent a combined thirty years in prison based largely on the testimony of two men--Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West. For nearly twenty years, Hayne, a medical examiner, performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend, West, a local dentist, touted his skill as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. They became the go-to experts for prosecutors all over the state and helped to convict many Mississippians, however, some of those convictions began to fall apart.

Lindsy Fitzharris writes about surgical innovations in The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. Nineteenth-century surgery was brutal. Surgeons, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. Surgical theaters were no place for the squeamish, either. The most baffling outcome of these surgeries was the extremely high mortality rates of post-operative infections. Into the fray steps and unassuming Quaker surgeon by the name of Joseph Lister, who worked tirelessly to solve the mystery of these infection deaths and whose efforts would revolutionize science and medicine forever.

The History of Medicine in 50 Discoveries is by Marguerite Vigliani, MD and Gale Eaton. This book, arranged in chronological order, lists 50 medical discoveries that helped mankind leap forward in our evolution. For instance, a 5,000 year old mummy was found to have 61 tattoos--most of which matched acupuncture points--and walnut-sized pieces of medicinal fungus. Neolithic surgeons bored holes in patients' brains to relieve pressure at least 10,000 years ago. From Mesopotamian pharmaceuticals and ancient Greek sleep therapy to germs, X-rays, and modern prosthetics and organ transplants, this book traces all of the inspirations, accidents, and dogged determination that has helped humanity's ability to heal itself.