Lewis Thomas

A physician and cancer researcher shares his personal observations on the uniformity, diversity, interdependence, and strange powers of the earth's life forms

Notes of a Biology Watcher

The Lives of a Cell

More Notes of a Biology Watcher

The Medusa and the Snail

This magnificent collection of essays by scientist and National Book Award-winning writer Lewis Thomas remains startlingly relevant for today’s world. Luminous, witty, and provocative, the essays address such topics as “The Attic of the Brain,” “Falsity and Failure,” “Altruism,” and the effects the federal government’s virtual abandonment of support for basic scientific research will have on medicine and science. Profoundly and powerfully, Thomas questions the folly of nuclear weaponry, showing that the brainpower and money spent on this endeavor are needed much more urgently for the basic science we have abandoned—and that even medicine’s most advanced procedures would be useless or insufficient in the face of the smallest nuclear detonation. And in the title essay, he addresses himself with terrifying poignancy to the question of what it is like to be young in the nuclear age. “If Wordsworth had gone to medical school, he might have produced something very like the essays of Lewis Thomas.”—TIME “No one better exemplifies what modern medicine can be than Lewis Thomas.”—The New York Times Book Review

Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Lives of a Cell

Dorion Sagan

Lynn Margulis

Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution

Microcosmos

A doctor's fascinating view of what medicine was, and what it has become. Thomas first learned about medicine by watching his father practice in an era when doctors comforted rather than healed. Looking back upon his experiences as a medical student, young doctor, and senior researcher, Thomas notes that medicine is now rich in possibility and promise.

Notes of a Medicine-watcher

The Youngest Science

Astute observations on the fates of the medusa, a parasitical jellyfish, and the sea slug to which it attaches itself touch upon eternal issues of life and death.

William Bulloch

Fildes Paul

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Treasury of Human Inheritance;

Revised and edited by Norman Itzkowitz. Superb grammar and exercise book enables students to quickly recognize, understand and begin to use the basic patterns of modern Turkish. Full glossary.

Elementary Turkish

The physician explores such major contemporary medical issues as AIDS, drug abuse, aging, and the environment in the contexts of both evolutionary biology and modern science

Fragile Species

The Wonderful Mistake

Institute of Medicine

Steering Committee for the Symposium on the Medical Implications of Nuclear War

Institute of Medicine Staff

The first part of this interdisciplinary study of the consequences of nuclear war provides an overview of its physical and environmental effects: urban fires, nuclear winter, nuclear famine, and toxic environments. Part II considers the consequences from the standpoint of death, injuries, and the health of survivors; and describes the effects of radiation exposure, food shortages and malnutrition on the prospects of survival, and psychological consequences. Part III reviews the demand for medical resources after a nuclear attack, and estimates the actual supply likely to be available. Part IV addresses the nuclear arms race from a psychosocial point or view, while Part V offers views on the prospects for recovery from nuclear war. ISBN 0-309-03692-5:$43.50.

The Medical Implications of Nuclear War

The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning, on warts, and on Montaigne, as well as an assessment of medical science and health care. In these essays and others, Thomas once again conveys his observations of the scientific world in prose marked by wonder and wit.

Reprint of the ed. published by Viking Press, New York.

Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."

From the 1920s when he watched his father, a general practitioner who made housecalls and wrote his prescriptions in Latin, to his days in medical school and beyond, Lewis Thomas saw medicine evolve from an art into a sophisticated science. The Youngest Science is Dr. Thomas's account of his life in the medical profession and an inquiry into what medicine is all about--the youngest science, but one rich in possibility and promise. He chronicles his training in Boston and New York, his war career in the South Pacific, his most impassioned research projects, his work as an administrator in hospitals and medical schools, and even his experiences as a patient. Along the way, Thomas explores the complex relationships between research and practice, between words and meanings, between human error and human accomplishment, More than a magnificent autobiography, The Youngest Science is also a celebration and a warning--about the nature of medicine and about the future life of our planet.

Notes of a Medicine-Watcher

Fred Solomon

Robert Q. Marston

Written by world-renowned scientists, this volume portrays the possible direct and indirect devastation of human health from a nuclear attack. The most comprehensive work yet produced on this subject, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War includes an overview of the potential environmental and physical effects of nuclear bombardment, describes the problems of choosing who among the injured would get the scarce medical care available, addresses the nuclear arms race from a psychosocial perspective, and reviews the medical needs--in contrast to the medical resources likely to be available--after a nuclear attack. "It should serve as the definitive statement on the consequences of nuclear war."--Arms Control Today

Lewis Thomas

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