Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century by Kevin FongMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a very interesting book written for the curious layman, bringing together trauma experienced in extremes (which marked the names of the chapters: Ice, Fire, Water, Orbit, Mars, etc. Go Captain Planet! LOL), medicine and exploration.
What I found interesting was the author's background: he has advanced degrees in medicine, astrophysics and engineering! And he was kind enough to explain the functions of both bodily processes and satellites and machinery in terms that any person could understand, even humorously at times ("And then, in one of the most effective rapid weight-loss programs the world has ever known, I go from being 336 pounds to weighing nothing," Fong writes of his weightlessness training in "The Vomit Comet.").
Fong wrote in the introduction that his book is "about life: its fragility, its fractal beauty, and its resilience." And it truly was! Along the way, I enjoyed learning about the origins of plastic surgery, of the British infantryman who survived being shot in the heart in World War I for at least 23 years afterwards, as well as the ABCs of trauma care codified by the incredibly brave James Styner, who overcame great personal tragedy and did his best to make sure no one would go through what his family went through.
Reading the chapter on SARS, the first pandemic of the century in 2003, strikes differently in the middle of this current pandemic, and reminds us how, while the public did not experience that many fatalities compared with COVID 19, it was only due to the sacrifices of the healthcare workers like Dr. Carlo Urbani who literally shielded us with their lives. It was very chilling to read of the similarities of SARS and COVID... SARS was also a coronavirus that jumped from civet cats to humans, and it was first detected in China as well.
"The fight against epidemics... is won not by high-tech interventions but by public-health measures... indeed, the polio epidemic, which gave birth to the specialty of intensive care, was defeated not by ventilators, adrenaline pumps, or dialysis machines but by a program of vaccination - a campaign so effective that today the polio virus stands on the brink of eradication from the world."
It speaks much about the need for public education when Fong wrote this in 2012, but that as late as 2019, there were still polio outbreaks in the Philippines, despite the polio vaccine being readily available.
Books like Fong's bring comfort because they provide much-needed perspective, and hope. But doctors and scientists can only do so much. We should do our part and listen to them, and set aside all politics, all ego when we do so.
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