Catherine Musemeche MDRecensioni

Great biography of Mary Sears, a marine biologist who essentially established the U.S. Navy's oceanography department. Her team collected data on tides, waves, landing conditions, and weather that assisted the U.S. Navy in invasions all over the world.

Excerpt from a longer article:

Timely Take-aways for Life-long Learners

Lesser-known Stories from the World War II Era
Several new books explore the lesser-known stories of prisoners, survivors, resistance fighters, scientists, and other amazing individuals of the World War II era.

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Lethal Tides
Catherine Musemeche, 2022, William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Themes: History, Biography, Women
Explore the life and achievements of Mary Sears, the first oceanographer of the Navy. Her efforts in gathering and analyzing ocean data averted disasters in the WWII Pacific theater.
Take-aways: The essential role of women scientists during wartime is often overlooked. Use this engaging biography to show the importance of this woman’s scientific contributions.

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Whether helping educators keep up-to-date in their subject-areas, promoting student reading in the content-areas, or simply encouraging nonfiction leisure reading, teacher librarians need to be aware of the best new titles across the curriculum and how to activate life-long learning. - Annette Lamb

A history of the development of the field of oceanography, more or less in its infancy when WWII started, and the development of a (United States) naval oceanographic department that was previously lacking. I was surprised to learn that even in the 1940s it seemed that the Navy had relatively little understanding of what I would consider to be fairly basic oceanographic knowledge like currents and winds, much less how important accurate tidal predictions were to successful amphibious invasions. Overall solid on the facts I knew about and basically plausible on the rest, though there were occasional moments of inconsistency or exaggeration that gave me some pause ("lost at sea for 23 days" became "four weeks" in the next paragraph). Entertaining and worth a read even though I think the specifics might be best taken with a grain of salt.

A fascinating story of a woman not widely known but who had an illustrious career between and during the world wars. Mary Sears.

The book ranges far and wide so that Mary Sears experience and achievements are set in a context of women's place and role in the war. It's enlightening.½

When I received my copy of Hurt in the mail, I intended to read the introduction and then continue with what I was doing, but before I knew it, I was 50 pages in and didn't want to stop reading! Musemeche really draws the reader in by introducing the reader to a case history and then smoothly transitions to commentary.

I liked the mix of history, stories, case studies and thoughtful discussion of issues facing the treatment of trauma. Musemeche writes about the history of trauma care starting in the Civil War era all the way up to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

People who enjoy books such as Complications or Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance both by Atul Gawande will find this book equally fascinating and written in a simile style. Musemeche's style of writing blends factual information with commentary gleaned from a career in medicine for a fast paced, informative read.½

When someone is severely injured in an accident, we expect the speedy arrival of EMTs with a fully equipped ambulance, skilled doctors and nurses at the hospital and state of the art medical equipment. We expect full recovery for almost everyone. Such coordinated efforts only came about very recently. Hurt: The Inspiring, Untold Story of Trauma Care tells the story of how we arrived at our current felicitous situation. Musemeche recounts the many ways we have discovered to harm ourselves (including war, extreme sports, mountain climbing and guns) and the various people, medical and lay, who have contributed to the effort to mitigate those catastrophes.

Trauma care began in that most traumatic of human experiences. Wounded Civil War soldiers, if they were able to get any medical care at all, were most often treated with amputation. The surgeons acted quickly and usually without anesthesia. There was no way to preserve damaged limbs or restore function. Gangrene was a constant danger. War continues to provide the lab in which many medical advancements are made.

The advent of automobiles also contributed to an increasing number of injuries. Accident studies involving roads, intersections and guardrails, seat belts and infant car seats have helped decrease car accident deaths 80% in the last fifty years because we have learned how to interrupt the chain of events that lead to injuries in the first place. This is a surprisingly recent improvement when one considers that "[i]n 1960 only four states had specifications for ambulance design, only six required standard training for rescue personnel, and less than half of all ambulance attendants had received even basic American Red Cross first aid training."

Musemeche covers the improvements in transport by ambulance (originally hearses were often used), later by helicopter (first used in Vietnam) as well as treatments such as CPR, blood transfusions, and prosthetics. The writing is easily accessible and occasionally shines as when Musemeche describes how "bullets tear through the human body, leaving a meandering trail of destruction like a tornado through a trailer park." There are a few minor typos but this one should never have gotten through the editorial process: "Drew continued pushing for equal rights, working to change the pattern of rigid desegregation of the hospitals in Washington." Desegregation would mean the hospitals were integrated, already offering equal care. Overall, this is an absorbing history of the people who have given us a chance to survive death and destruction—people for whom I am personally very thankful.

First, thank you to LibraryThing and U.P.N.E. Publishers for this book to enjoy and review. As a retired Nurse Practitioner, I admire all books medical, and this one was ever-so special to me. Dr. Musemeche did a superb job of covering the history of trauma care beginning back to the Civil War. And what a very complete job she did, reviewing every aspect of trauma, how it occurs so often in very remote areas, what exactly is an “early-response” team, and how it developed over the years. “As long as we are out moving in the world, we will get hurt” as Dr. Musemeche explained. You will enjoy this very factual book covering all aspects of human trauma, where we have been and where we might be headed. Thank you Dr. Musemeche for such a great contribution to the history of trauma care.

“Hurt the Inspiring, Untold Story of Trauma Care” is an unfamiliar and important piece of history told using actual cases and explained with, at times, clinical but often compassionate style. Dr. Musemeche explains how tragedies coupled with several heroes created the trauma care system that saves countless lives today. This is a great read for those interested in medical history. I give the book four stars.

11/16/2016

This is an absorbing story of the development of emergency medicine from its beginnings on battlefields in the nineteenth century to modern times. I wished there were more in-depth discussions of specific patients, but that wish really reflects only my personal preference. The book is engagingly written and taught me a great deal I hadn't known about this branch of medicine (especially regarding how recently it has come to exist as a specialty as we know it, and how important it is as its own field).

Hurt is an outstanding history of trauma care in the US interspersed with individual stories relating how different aspects of trauma care affected individual people. It is very well written and Dr. Musemeche does an exemplary job of explaining technical aspects of trauma care in a way that everyone can understand. Highly recommended!

(Note: I received this book from the publisher via a LibraryThing Early Reviewer.)

Having worked as a Chaplain at a Level 1 Trauma emergency department, I found this book remarkably well-researched ando informative. I was especially intrigued by the historical development of trauma care and the connection to armed conflicts. I highly recommend this book to anyone who works in Healthcare. This book provides important insights into the disconnect between popular perception of trauma care and how it is provideo, and how to bridge that gap.

Reading HURT continually surprised me with my total ignorance of the history of the trauma care of accidentally injured bodies. The numbers are truly astonishing for all that has happened over time in terms of types of injuries. The descriptive stories of real people experiencing some bodily destruction were almost overwhelming to read but the author was an expert in explaining what was happening in the before, during and after in the care the people received. This is a book full of organization and detail that is presented in a fascinating and easy to read manner.

This was both a horrifying and fascinating read. The author describes the history of various forms of medical care, including trauma care and plastic surgery. Given the study released just this week showing that rural patients are 50% more likely to die from trauma than urban ones, this book is all the more relevant for its timeliness. Highly recommended.

I received a copy of Hurt to review and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it may read like a textbook but I was wrong. It was extremely informative and combined real-life stories of trauma survivors along with history lessons on just how far we've come in this field. I worked in EMS for 2 years and in a Level 1 trauma center for 2 years and I wish this book had been available then. I think it should be required reading for anyone working in the trauma field, whether they are an EMT or a trauma surgeon. There is a lesson to be learned for everyone.

As a former EMT, the history of trauma care has always been an interesting topic, made even more so through this book. The author looks at how trauma care evolved mainly through discoveries and practices engaged in during wars. Making this history even more compelling are the addition of personal stories that add to the reader’s understanding. This was a fascinating look at something we all take for granted – being able to receive immediate emergency help simply by dialing 911.

I'm a medical student and was happy to receive this book through the early reviewers program just as I was starting a month-long rotation in the neonatal intensive care unit. I found the first few chapters on the history of pediatric surgery, ECMO, and TPN to be fascinating. It was really interesting to learn about the history behind the different treatments I was seeing in action every day in the NICU. The second half of the book was a little less compelling for me, primarily because a lot of the background information given by the author were things I already knew from medical school. However, I do think that this information would probably be interesting and useful for a lay person reading this book and understand why the author included it. I thought the cases the author included were very thought provoking. I just wish there were more cases and less background information. I've read a lot of books from this medical memoir genre and this one was definitely good, but not an all time favorite for me.

Dr. Catherine Musemeche provides a fascinating look into the little known world of pediatric surgery in Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery. Her book tells of a surgeon who is concerned about scientific precision yet who also demonstrates deep wells of human compassion. Some of her patients are stories in unimaginable sorrow; others in astounding success.

As a layman, I had many “aha” moments from this book. For example, we usually think that surgery is surgery and that whatever tools are needed are readily available to any surgeon at any hospital. Children are merely smaller sized people, but all the tools and techniques are uniform. This is patently untrue. Dr Musemeche shows that the proper instruments needed for surgery on such a small scale do not always exist. And even if an implement exists, the physiology of the patient often proves too fragile for the instrument to be of any real use. While a catheter may be inserted into an adult vein, a scaled version may be useless in a neo-natal procedure because the vein lacks the structural integrity to hold the catheter.

This is but an example of the kinds of things that are the daily concern of surgery on the smallest of scales. This book illustrates the words of the Hebrew Psalmist that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

A fascinating record of the history, current state, and possible future of of pediatric surgery. Full of touching stories, including sad ones. Maybe not the best reading material if your family is expecting an addition.½

An absolutely wonderful romp through the history and contemporary practice of pediatric surgery written - well - by a pediatric surgeon. I spent many years working beside surgeons of all stripes and count many surgeons as good friends, but the uniqueness and difficulty of operating on and caring for such tiny and anatomically diverse humans has never been as clearly articulated to me until now. This would be a fine gift for a bright high school or college student considering medical school to give them an introduction to the real and sometimes painful realities of medical practice.

From the perspective a a lay person who has long been fascinated by all things medical, this was an absolutely fascinating read. I have taken for granted the notion of the existence of such a thing as a pediatric surgeon, yet had no idea that it is a relatively recent development, in fact, still coming into it's own. The book presents case studies which in and of themselves are amazing, but the cases serve as the platform to the truly engrossing brief history of pediatric surgery, the differences between a child's body and an adult's (significantly more than just size}, the hurdles in the way of creating instruments and devices for use in these tiny bodies, the ethics and politics in this field of endeavor, and above all, the heroic ingenuity, courage, and determination of the innovators in this field. This is a book which is definitely accessible to the lay person and it is also a riveting education for anyone who is interested in the medical aspects of fetuses, preemies, and children in general. Excellent read!

Small is a wonderful and scary insight of the Pediatric Surgical mystique. I've worked with general surgeons and thought I knew a little about their work. This book was such that I've gained new appreciation to what this calling involves. The education, skill, and patience for the field of medicine deserves so much more credit.

This book is excellent. Dr. Musemeche weaves together detailed descriptions of pediatric surgery, diseases and disorders, with personal stories, and the rich history of pediatric surgery. The description of the development of various techniques and tools is utterly fascinating. This book is very readable - I work as a pediatric PT and I am recommending this book to all my co-workers.

Disclosure: I received a copy via LibraryThing Early Readers.

This book, according to the acknowledgments, began as journal scribblings of a pediatric surgeon. It balances cases along with the history of pediatric surgery through the lens of devices that were developed to save especially premature infants (ECMO, mesh for bowels, TPN). Since a pediatric surgeon is a type of general surgeon, the scope of the book expands to address other issues such as accident-prevention, obesity, and fetal surgery. It's a book that was easy to dip in and out of because each chapter focuses on a particular kind of surgery, ailment, or device, and each chapter usually revolves around one person crucial to developing the specific are of expertise.

I like science writing though I'm not a scientist myself, and this book was quite affecting because of the high stakes and complexities involved in treating infant and child patients. It struck me how much I don't know about surgery, and it struck me that this book is quite the antidote for sanitized, hour-long medical dramas on TV to which I've been addicted since ER premiered twenty years ago.

I thoroughly enjoyed Small. Musemeche does a fabulous job introducing the reader to the world of pediatric surgery and all the complications of working on a child, who contrary to popular belief, is not a miniature adult. My favorite part was reading about all the advances in biomedical engineering over the years - Musemeche is great at providing a history of medical devices - the various case studies of children, and the discussion of public health and prevention. My one quibble with this book is that sometimes it veers into territory that seems more appropriate for adult surgery or general pediatrics - which is not actually a problem, but just seemed a bit off topic. An excellent read for those who enjoy science writing and learning about an interesting specialty in medicine.

This is a readable history of the birth and growth of pediatric surgery, from the beginning when it was wrongly assumed that babies were simply smaller adults, through the development of specific instruments for treating children. The author is a pediatric surgeon who also describes the afflictions peculiar to children -- dangerous playgrounds, for example.