Medical non-fiction – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Frankie: The Woman Who Saved Millions from Thalidomide

Thalidomide: patented in Germany as a non-toxic cure-all for sleeplessness and morning sickness. A wonder drug with no side-effects.

We know differently now.

Today, thalidomide is a byword for tragedy and drug reform – a sign of what happens when things aren’t done ‘the right way’. But when it was released in the 1950s, it was the best thing since penicillin – something that doctors were encouraged to prescribe to all of their patients. Nobody could anticipate what it actually did: induce sleeping, prevent morning sickness, and drastically harm unborn children.

But, whilst thalidomide rampaged and ravaged throughout most of the West, it never reached the United States. It landed on the desk of Dr Frances Kelsey, and there it stayed as she battled hierarchy, patriarchy, and the Establishment in an effort to prove that it was dangerous. Frankie is her story.

Purchase Links

https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/frankie/9780750991919/

The Prison Doctor Paperback by — **ISBN:** 9780008311445
**Imprint:** HQ
**On Sale:** 2019-06-13
**Format:** Paperback
Purchase Link

Blurb
Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent behind bars.
Savage beatings, dirty protests, drug addiction, depression and prisoners desperate to turn their lives around, Dr Amanda Brown has seen it all.
The no-holds-barred memoirs of a GP who went from working at a quiet suburban practice to treating the country’s most dangerous criminals – first in young offenders’ institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe’s largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield.
A doctor devoted to caring for those most of us would rather forget