What happened that changed the priest—the revered healer of antiquity—into a person of science? How was the modern doctor made? Physician is Rajeev Kurapati’s earnest attempt to answer this question and others central to the practice of medicine. For instance, how have the advances of medical technology influenced society’s perception of death? How do physicians balance thinking with feeling when dealing with critically ill patients? How do we meet the needs of patients seeking a personal connection to their doctor in what may seem to be an emotionally deficient medical landscape? Is it possible to overcome some of the compromises we’ve had to make along the way? What is the promise of modern medicine and its limitations? And notably—as medical care becomes more and more digitized and automated, will the medical degree—a universal badge of respectability—continue to hold value? ​Dr. Kurapati, a practicing hospital physician, succeeds in gracefully exploring the depths of what it really means to be a doctor—and a patient—at this time in our human history, and his blueprint for building a stronger future of healthcare is an important and valuable one.

"Examines how the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Margaret Fuller draw from representations of and theories concerning animal magnetism, somnambulism, or hypnosis rendered in newspapers, literary and medical journals, pamphlets, and books, and also includes discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lydia Maria Child, and Walt Whitman"--Provided by publisher.

From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the period, mesmerism embraced a variety of phenomena, including mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance. Although it had been debunked by Benjamin Franklin in late eighteenth-century France, the practice nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long resurgence in the United States. Emily Ogden here offers the first comprehensive account of those boom years. Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.

This work examines the development of a “dissenting” perspective on the emerging doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Post-Reformation Protestant thought. By “dissenting,” the author means “beyond the mainstream of thought, sometimes affirming but expanding orthodox positions, but at other times pursuing new directions and images of the Spirit.” A new look is offered at the Puritan-Separatist era in English dissenting traditions, as well as organized dissenters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of particular interest are the applications of current philosophic and scientific writers. There are sections on major German thinkers of the nineteenth century and major influential theologians of the last century who laid new foundations in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Readers will be interested in the inclusion of new religious movements in two eras, and creative contemporary ideas of the Spirit. How an ongoing “dissenting” perspective contrasts with mainstream thinking is woven through four centuries of literature on the Spirit. The author contends that we have learned much from the “dissenting” perspective, and he offers seven constructive affirmations of the Spirit of God drawn from his survey and analyses of the previous four centuries. The bibliography is comprehensive of major works on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, plus unusual sources of dissenting thought.

The Bakken collection records the historical role of electricity and magnetism in the life sciences and medicine. ...impressive. --MEDICAL HISTORY