i'm pretty sure she already owns gray's anatomy.

November 12, 2009 7:25 AM

What's a good book for a med student?

I'm looking for gift ideas for a friend who is halfway through medical school. I'm giving her sister, who is a student at FIT, a copy of the Sartorialist. What's something similar (coffee table book-esque), but medicine or health related?

posted by kidsleepy to Shopping (13 answers total)

Good heavens, don't they have enough reading material? Maybe a collection of comics, or a picture book of some sort - antique medical illustrations?
posted by amtho at 7:31 AM on November 12, 2009

Antique medical illustrations are more along the lines of what I was thinking - a cool coffee table book with pretty pictures (like the Sartorialist), not a textbook.
posted by kidsleepy at 7:34 AM on November 12, 2009

Gray's Anatomy?
posted by chunking express at 7:45 AM on November 12, 2009

Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 is a pretty awesome coffee table book. This one from the Mütter Museum looks pretty good, though I haven't looked at the book (love the museum though).
posted by reptile at 7:55 AM on November 12, 2009

Having known medical students, I'm with amtho: another medical book is the last thing they want to see.

Perhaps something from the same shelf as "Stress Management for Dummies?"
posted by rokusan at 7:57 AM on November 12, 2009

I swear I got cobaltnine another nice coffee table book of surgery photographs that wasn't Dissection but I can't seem to recall what it's called or find it online.
posted by reptile at 7:57 AM on November 12, 2009

Medical students do so much factual reading that they have little time for anything that's not furthering their studies. At the same time, medical schools can be...indifferent...to their students' well-being. Perhaps you should look into books written by doctors about their own experiences, such as Richard Selzer's "Letters to a Young Doctor." Such a book might help your friend feel like she's still doing official work while feeding her med student soul.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:22 AM on November 12, 2009

The photos in this book are absolutely stunning.
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 9:57 AM on November 12, 2009

This and this are a couple of books that blur the lines between medicine and art in a coffee-table sorta way. They are both very nice specimens as far as their actual book-ness goes, weighty and substantial on nice paper, but do not break the bank. In my experience they are always conversation starters.
posted by nickjadlowe at 10:34 AM on November 12, 2009

Oliver Sacks wrote some books that were pretty popular like "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat."

He has a lot of books that sounds pretty interesting and might be interesting to someone studying medicine or neuroscience or psychology.
posted by anniecat at 10:45 AM on November 12, 2009

Reptile bought me The Sacred Heart which is very gorgeous and very coffee-table, provided one isn't squeamish.
posted by cobaltnine at 3:36 PM on November 12, 2009

Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery (you can view more pictures at the publisher's site)?
posted by James Scott-Brown at 9:25 AM on November 13, 2009

i had to read Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures for a short fiction class, and i really enjoyed it. perhaps a short story collection would work well..?
posted by gursky at 6:18 PM on November 14, 2009