# data[].attributes.headline
Oxford's recommended introductory reading for Medicine students

# data[].attributes.subject
Oxford's recommended introductory reading for Medicine students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Students often ask for reading suggestions, in order to get their minds tuned into some of the topics that will be covered, or to simply provide a more general foundation for University. This list of suggested reading is not an exhaustive one, nor is it a list of material you must read. There are countless good general texts, so do explore: as well as books, read the local and national press, and look for relevant podcasts, websites, lectures, events and museums or exhibitions in your local area. This is not a list of books you should rush out and buy:

First and foremost, read what interests you the most. Each student should, from early on, begin to develop their own particular area of expertise.

Second, consider what subjects or topics relevant to Medicine you may not cover in your A-level studies (or equivalent).

General

Ashcroft, F. Life at the Extremes. Univ California Press, 2002.

Black, J., Boyd, C.A.R. and Noble, D. (editors). The Logic of Life. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Calvin, W. H., and Ojamann, G. A. Conversations with Neil's Brain: The Natural Nature of Thought and Language. Basic Books, 1995. (Conversations with Neil's Brain is also available free of charge)

Clarke, R. Your Life in my Hands: a Junior Doctor's Story. Metro Publishing, 2017.

De Kruif, P. Microbe Hunters. Kessinger Publishing Co, 2005.

Glynn, I. Elegance in Science. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Goldacre, B. Bad Science. Harper Perennial, 2009. (also see Ben Goldacre's columns for the Guardian)

Kalanithi, P. When Breath Becomes Air. Random House, 2016.

Kay, A. This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor. Picador, 2018.

Marsh, H. Do no Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery. W&N, 2014.

Mukherjee, S. The Emperor of all Maladies: a Biography of Cancer. Fourth Estate, 2011.

Sacks, O. The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat. Pan Macmillan Picador, 1986.

Sykes, B. Blood of the Isles. Corgi Books, 2007.

Westaby, S. The Knife's Edge. Mudlark, 2019.

Williams, I. The Lady Doctor. Myriad Editions, 2019.

Williams, I. The Bad Doctor. Myriad Editions, 2014.

Wishart, A. One in Three. Profile Books, 2007.

Yong, E. I Contain Multitudes: the Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. Vintage, 2017

You could also consider reading some of the Medicine and Health-related volumes in Oxford University Press' Very Short Introductions series.

Online resources

Start by looking for websites providing information on topics you might be interested in, or read the science sections of newspapers. There are plenty of useful resources out there so do explore.

Here is a list of websites offering podcasts and videos relevant to medical sciences:

Oxford Podcasts
iTunesU > Oxford University > Medical Sciences or University of Oxford Podcasts site
BBC Science

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Students often ask for reading suggestions, in order to get their minds tuned into some of the topics that will be covered, or to simply provide a more general foundation for University. This list of suggested reading is not an exhaustive one, nor is it a list of material you must read.

# data[].attributes.body
Podcast: Tim Harford reports on the global race to vaccinate the world against Covid-19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Vaccinate the World - Listeners’ Questions - BBC Sounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tim Harford reports on the global race to vaccinate the world against Covid-19.

# data[].attributes.headline
TED Talks: What you need to know about medicine

# data[].attributes.subject
TED Talks: What you need to know about medicine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What you need to know about medicine | TED Talks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content. By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Explore the world of trailblazing health tech that's turning texts into thoughts, 3D printing bionic limbs - and even growing human brains inside a lab. From precision medicine to the intriguing marriage between your mind and wearables, these talks may change the way you think about your health.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Explore the world of trailblazing health tech that's turning texts into thoughts, 3D printing bionic limbs - and even growing human brains inside a lab. From precision medicine to the intriguing marriage between your mind and wearables, these talks may change the way you think about your health.

# data[].attributes.headline
Conversations with Neil's Brain: The Neural Nature of Thought & LanguageCopyright by William H Calvin and George A Ojemann

# data[].attributes.subject
Conversations with Neil's Brain: The Neural Nature of Thought & LanguageCopyright by William H Calvin and George A Ojemann

# data[].attributes.body
Free ebook of a classic text!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It’s a tour of the human cerebral cortex, conducted from the operating room, and has been on the New Scientist bestseller list of science books. It is suitable for biology and cognitive neuroscience supplementary reading lists.

# data[].attributes.body
Choose the single sign-on login and use your FHS credentials to access these mini-lectures from professors & experts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Biology Explore Biology Immunology learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers - produced by MASSOLIT

# data[].attributes.headline
Your Life in my Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story by Rachel Clarke

# data[].attributes.subject
Your Life in my Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story by Rachel Clarke

# data[].attributes.body
How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person's life? In Your Life in My Hands, television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline. During the historic junior doctor strikes of 2016, Rachel was at the forefront of the campaign against the government's imposed contract upon young doctors. Her heartfelt, deeply personal account of life as a junior doctor in today's NHS is both a powerful polemic on the degradation of Britain's most vital public institution and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service.

# data[].attributes.body
Podcast: India Rakusen discusses how we can improve healthcare for women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
28ish Days Later - Day Twenty-Eight: New Power - BBC Sounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

# data[].attributes.body
Since 2003 Dr Ben Goldacre has been exposing dodgy medical data in his popular Guardian column. In this eye-opening book he takes on the MMR hoax and misleading cosmetics ads, acupuncture and homeopathy, vitamins and mankind’s vexed relationship with all manner of ‘toxins’. Along the way, the self-confessed ‘Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General’ performs a successful detox on a Barbie doll, sees his dead cat become a certified nutritionist and probes the supposed medical qualifications of ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith. Full spleen and satire, Ben Goldacre takes us on a hilarious, invigorating and ultimately alarming journey through the bad science we are fed daily by hacks and quacks.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee 

# data[].attributes.body
Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with – and perished from – for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience and perseverance, but also of hubris, arrogance and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out ‘war against cancer’. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteeth-century recipient of primitive radiation and chemotherapy and Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through toxic, bruising, and draining regimes to survive and to increase the store of human knowledge.

# data[].attributes.headline
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalthani 

# data[].attributes.subject
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalthani 

# data[].attributes.body
An intimate and exquisitely written meditation on the meaning of life by a young neurosurgeon facing terminal cancer. Dr. Paul Kalanithi wrote When Breath Becomes Air in the last 22 months of his life. The result is an inspirational account of family, medicine and literature, on publication swiftly finding an audience of booksellers moved by its gradual shift from hope to Kalanithi’s dignified acceptance of life’s end. We strongly recommend the emotional investment to read it. At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.

One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

# data[].attributes.body
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships… Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, these diaries are everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides an essential, brutally frank account of what life is like for the beleaguered vanguard of the NHS. Now providing the groundwork for a sell-out stand-up tour, This is Going to Hurt is an unmissable window into Britain’s ailing health system and the lives of the people who are its lifeblood. Simply essential reading.

# data[].attributes.headline
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

# data[].attributes.subject
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

# data[].attributes.body
What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences when it all goes wrong? Do No Harm offers an unforgettable insight into the highs and lows of a life dedicated to operating on the human brain, in all its exquisite complexity. With astonishing candour and compassion, Henry Marsh reveals the exhilarating drama of surgery, the chaos and confusion of a busy modern hospital, and above all the need for hope when faced with life's most agonising decisions.

# data[].attributes.headline
The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction by William Bynum

# data[].attributes.subject
The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction by William Bynum

# data[].attributes.body
Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, this Very Short Introduction surveys the history of medicine from classical times to the present. Focusing on the key turning points in the history of Western medicine, such as the advent of hospitals and the rise of experimental medicine, Bill Bynum offers insights into medicine's past, while at the same time engaging with contemporary issues, discoveries, and controversies.

# data[].attributes.headline
Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Dunn & Tony Hope

# data[].attributes.subject
Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Dunn & Tony Hope

# data[].attributes.body
The issue of medical ethics, from thorny moral questions such as euthanasia and the morality of killing to political questions such as the fair distribution of health care resources, is rarely out of today's media. This area of ethics covers a wide range of issues, from mental health to reproductive medicine, as well as including management issues such as resource allocation, and has proven to hold enduring interest for the general public as well as the medical practitioner. This Very Short Introduction provides an invaluable tool with which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine.

# data[].attributes.body
Cartoonist and doctor Ian Williams introduces us to the troubled life of Dr Iwan James, as all humanity, it seems, passes through his surgery door. Incontinent old ladies, men with eagle tattoos, traumatised widowers - Iwan's patients cause him both empathy and dismay, as he tries to do his best in a world of limited time and budgetary constraints, and in which there are no easy answers. His feelings for his partners also cause him grief: something more than friendship for the sympathetic Dr Lois Pritchard, and not a little frustration at the prankish and obstructive Dr Robert Smith. Iwan's cycling trips with his friend Arthur provide some welcome relief, but even the landscape is imbued with his patients' distress. As we explore the phantoms from Iwan's past, we too begin to feel compassion for The Bad Doctor, and ask what is the dividing line between patient and provider?

# data[].attributes.headline
I Contain Multitudes: the Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

# data[].attributes.subject
I Contain Multitudes: the Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

# data[].attributes.body
Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It's an entire world, a colony full of life. In other words, you contain multitudes. They sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour, and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth. In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 

# data[].attributes.body
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences... Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world for ever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.

# data[].attributes.headline
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande 

# data[].attributes.subject
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande 

# data[].attributes.body
The struggle to perform well is universal, but nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable. His vivid stories take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to a polio outbreak in India and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors' participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand-washing. Finally, he gives a brutally honest insight into life as a practising surgeon.

# data[].attributes.headline
Complications by Atul Gawande (617.092 GAW)

# data[].attributes.subject
Complications by Atul Gawande (617.092 GAW)

# data[].attributes.body
This is a stunningly well-written account of the life of a surgeon: what it is like to cut into people's bodies and the terrifying - literally life and death - decisions that have to be made. There are accounts of operations that go wrong; of doctors who go to the bad; why autopsies are necessary; what it feels like to insert your knife into someone.

# data[].attributes.headline
Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

# data[].attributes.subject
Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

# data[].attributes.body
For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to accept the limits of what he can do. Never before has aging been such an important topic. The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but, as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.

# data[].attributes.headline
War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line by David Nott

# data[].attributes.subject
War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line by David Nott

# data[].attributes.body
For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world's most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital. The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal. Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realize that flying into a catastrophe - whether war or natural disaster - was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets.

# data[].attributes.headline
Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love, Loss and Consolation by Rachel Clarke

# data[].attributes.subject
Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love, Loss and Consolation by Rachel Clarke

# data[].attributes.body
As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Every day she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable. Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love. And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine. For if there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world.  Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis. It is a love letter - to a father, to a profession, to life itself.

# data[].attributes.headline
Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor by Max Pemberton 

# data[].attributes.subject
Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor by Max Pemberton 

# data[].attributes.body
If you're going to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into practice what they have spent the last six years learning. Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet -- for example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not. Along the way, Max and his fellow fledgling doctors grapple with the complicated questions of life, love, mental health and how on earth to make time to do your laundry.

# data[].attributes.headline
In Stitches: The Highs and Lows of Being an A&E doctor by Nick Edwards

# data[].attributes.subject
In Stitches: The Highs and Lows of Being an A&E doctor by Nick Edwards

# data[].attributes.body
Dr Nick Edwards writes with shocking honesty about life as an A&E doctor. He lifts the lid on government targets that led to poor patient care. He reveals the level of alcohol-related injuries that often bring the service to a near standstill. He shows just how bloody hard it is to look after the people who turn up at the hospital door. But he also shares the funny side – the unusual ‘accidents’ that result in with weird objects inserted in places they really should have ended up – and also the moving, tragic and heartbreaking.

# data[].attributes.headline
Where Does it Hurt?: What the Junior Doctor Did Next by Max Pemberton 

# data[].attributes.subject
Where Does it Hurt?: What the Junior Doctor Did Next by Max Pemberton 

# data[].attributes.body
The sequel to the bestselling Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor. The junior doctor is back, but working on the streets for the Phoenix Outreach Project. Unfortunately, his first year in a hospital hasn't quite prepared him for it... He's into his second year of medicine, but this time Max is out of the wards and onto the streets, working for the Phoenix Outreach Project. Fuelled by tea and more enthusiasm than experience, he attempts to locate and treat a wide and colourful range of patients that somehow his first year on the wards didn't prepare him for... from Molly the 80-year-old drugs mule and God in a Tesco car park, to middle-class mums addicted to appearances and pain killers in equal measure. His friends don't approve of the turn his career is taking, his mother is worried and the public spit at him, but Max is determined to make a difference. Despite warnings that miracles are rare, and that not everyone's life can be turned around, Max is still surprised by those that can be saved.

# data[].attributes.body
There are dramatic differences in health between countries and within countries. But this is not a simple matter of rich and poor. A poor man in Glasgow is rich compared to the average Indian, but the Glaswegian’s life expectancy is 8 years shorter. The Indian is dying of infectious disease linked to his poverty; the Glaswegian of violent death, suicide, heart disease linked to a rich country’s version of disadvantage. In all countries, people at relative social disadvantage suffer health disadvantage, dramatically so. Within countries, the higher the social status of individuals the better is their health. These health inequalities defy usual explanations. Conventional approaches to improving health have emphasised access to technical solutions – improved medical care, sanitation, and control of disease vectors; or behaviours – smoking, drinking – obesity, linked to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. These approaches only go so far. Creating the conditions for people to lead flourishing lives, and thus empowering individuals and communities, is key to reduction of health inequalities. In addition to the scale of material success, your position in the social hierarchy also directly affects your health, the higher you are on the social scale, the longer you will live and the better your health will be. As people change rank, so their health risk changes.

What makes these health inequalities unjust is that evidence from round the world shows we know what to do to make them smaller. This new evidence is compelling. It has the potential to change radically the way we think about health, and indeed society.

# data[].attributes.headline
Emmanuel College, Cambridge's recommended reading list

# data[].attributes.subject
Emmanuel College, Cambridge's recommended reading list

# data[].attributes.headline
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

# data[].attributes.subject
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

# data[].attributes.body
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with unusually acute artistic or mathematical talents. If sometimes beyond our surface comprehension, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human. A provocative exploration of the mysteries of the human mind, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a million-copy bestseller by the twentieth century's greatest neurologist.

# data[].attributes.body
See at a glance which books from this reading list are on the shelf now!

Green tick = available

Red cross = ask Miss O'Connor to reserve it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Search - Francis Holland School - Library - Oliver