Washoe County Library System

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...

Provides an introduction to the role of women in medicine.

"In 1974, a young doctor arrived at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with one goal in mind: to help eradicate smallpox. The only woman physician in her class in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a two-year epidemiology training program, Mary Guinan soon was selected to join India's Smallpox Eradication Program, which searched out and isolated patients with the disease. By May of 1975, the World Health Organization declared Uttar Pradash...

"Honors Mary Seacole's life, from her childhood in Kingston, Jamaica, and her encounters with racist Americans to her treatment of cholera patients in Panama and her bitter run-in with Florence Nightingale, who declined to work with her in Crimea becauseshe wasn't white. But Mary Seacole knew that the sick and wounded needed her compassion and care, and despite all obstacles, she answered the call to help them"-- The life of pioneering Jamaican nurse...

"Get the right care for your body, and avoid treatments that can endanger women, with this important manual from a physician who is a leading expert on sex and gender medicine."

"The never-before-told story of six intrepid Kentucky nuns, their journey to build a hospital in the poorest state in India, and the Indian nurses whose lives would never be the same New York Times editor Jyoti Thottam's mother was part of an extraordinary group of Indian women. Born in 1946, a time when few women dared to leave their house without the protection of a man, she left home by herself at just fifteen years old and traveled to Bihar-a...

"A woman's quest for a new life in Africa in the wake of World War II -- and a heroic career that hid a secret past. Over the span of fifty years, Dr. Anne Spoerry, French by birth, treated hundreds of thousands of individuals across rural Kenya. A member of the renowned Flying Doctors Service, Spoerry earned the cherished nickname "Mama Daktari"--"Mother Doctor"--from the people of Kenya. Yet few knew what drove her from post-World War II Europe...

After discovering the body of a man buried deep in the Arctic ice, Dr. Kate Philo and her team bring him back to life in their Boston lab, igniting a media firestorm that forces them to decide how far they are willing to go to protect their experiment.

It tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line.