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Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance | 
 enlarge | Author: Kenneth Kamler
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $1.18
You Save: $23.77 (95%)
New (12) Used (28) from $1.18
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 86327
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0312280777
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.98
EAN: 9780312280772
ASIN: 0312280777
Publication Date: January 20, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: EX-LIBRARY; used item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned for refund. Buy with confidence - your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Medical case studies can be fascinating to read, full of drama, heroism, and sometimes tragedy. Most doctors' tales take place in clinics or hospitals, but those pedestrian settings are not for Kenneth Kamler, who practices medicine outside, patching people up with surprising success under harrowing conditions. Surviving the Extremes starts with open-air surgery in the steamy jungles of the Amazon River, moves to disturbingly detailed descriptions of the many ways humans can die at sea, and from there takes white-knuckled readers through the rest of Earth's extreme environments. Krakauer fans will gasp at the book's best chapter, covering the high-altitude medical feats Kamler has performed on Mt. Everest and other peaks. "No course in medical school taught me the proper mixture of oxygen, IV fluids, and Tibetan chants to treat a subdural hematoma in below-zero temperatures on a 3-mile-high glacier," Kamler writes. Instead, he has learned the fine art of adventure doctoring by doing it, and in the process, he's won fans among the world's most prominent risk-takers. Through it all, Kamler remains fascinated by the human body's ability to heal under horrifically dangerous conditions. His medical adventures are inspiring and thrilling, as well as occasionally bloody and disgusting. In short, perfect stories of human survival. --Therese Littleton
Product Description
Physiological constraints confine our bodies to less than one-fifth of the earth's surface. Beyond that fraction lie the extremes. What happens when we go to them? Dr. Kenneth Kamler has spent years observing exactly what happens. A vice president of the legendary Explorers Club, he has climbed, dived, sledded, floated, and trekked through some of the most treacherous and remote regions in the world. A consultant for NASA, Yale University, and the National Geographic Society, he has explored undersea caves, crossed the frozen Antarctic wastelands, and stitched a boy's hand back together while kneeling in knee-deep Amazonian mud. He was the only doctor on Everest during the tragic expedition documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and helped treat its survivors. Kamler has devoted his life to investigating how our bodies respond to "environmental insults"-a nice way of saying the things that can kill us-and watched while some succumbed to them and others, sometimes miraculously, overcome them. Words like "extreme" and "survival" have lost some of their value from overuse and media hype. By showing us what happens when life itself is at stake, and the body's capacities put to their greatest test, this book reminds us what they truly mean. Divided into six sections-jungle, open sea, desert, underwater, high altitude, and outer space-Surviving the Extremes uses first-hand testimony and documented accounts to illustrate what happens in environments where our instinctive survival strategies must become fully engaged. These stories reveal how infinitely complex are the workings of the human body-and also how heartbreakingly fragile. At the heart of this book is a quest for the source of our will to survive and the haunting question of why some can, and others cannot, summon its awesome and nearly mystical power at their moment of greatest need. Surgeon, explorer, and masterful storyteller, Kamler takes us to the farthest reaches of the earth as well as into the uncharted territory within the human brain. Surviving the Extremes is a scientific nail-biter no reader will forget.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Great read! August 27, 2008
For those of us with a rather short attention span and who are wrapped up in the addiction of endurance/adventure sports, this book is awesome! It's so fascinating how the body does "survive the extremes". A great read all around :)
Flawed but intriguing February 10, 2007
The book begins with a powerful hook of a tale - about a sherpa who is gravely ill, the possible effects of the chanting that fills the air around him, and his seemingly impossible recovery.
Kamler divvies up different extreme climates and explores their effects on our human bodies. For the most part, the information is engrossing, although I found that my attention dipped in and out on occasion, mostly during his underwater sections.
Kamler's writing style is pretty straightforward and readable; I enjoyed the periodic witticisms that he injected, which were most prevalent toward the end of the book. I particularly appreciated that he selected the imaginary Mars-mission doctor to be the one who unravels on the journey. As a matter of fact, his Mars-mission narrative offered the most entertaining and illustrative comment on how a long-term mission in an enclosed space will affect our emotional selves and thus, the health of the mission.
I also especially enjoyed the story of the 1800s desert survivor, whose will to live was fueled by his raging desire for violent revenge on his former companion.
Throughout the book, Kamler's discussion on how the brain works, especially the electrical qualities of our thoughts, and how that plays into our survival, was fascinating.
I have some minor quibbles. One is that he makes reference to the "hottentots," an anachronistic - and offensive - name for the Khoikhoi people in South Africa.
 Dr. Kamler personally treated Beck Weathers - he was THERE November 2, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Trained as a doctor but always craved adventure, Dr. Kamler deliberately carved out his personal niche as Professional Expedition Doctor, and loved every minute of it, it shows in the writing. Having read Krakauer's account and leafed through Boukreev's, what a surprise to find Dr. Kamler personally weighing-in, he was the one who supervised the thawing-out of Beck Weathers, who knew the procedure was so delicate... At $3.00 used, this was QUITE a good deal !
 Starts with promise, then he mails it in June 12, 2006
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book has a great deal of promise and starts well. Contrary to what some reviewers here have said, I thought the chapter on the Amazon was well written and useful. The author's personal experiences should be welcomed by the reader because they are the source of authority and insight. Moreover, Kamler is able to draw on the experiences of human beings indigenous to the Amazon and impart their knowledge. That such personal involvement is necessary becomes sadly obvious in the subsequent chapters where the author seems out of his depth, despite a lot of desperate self-promotion and misleading marketing. In particular, the chapter on open-ocean survival is pathetically weak. Kamler "mailed it in." I got the distinct impression that he went on-line one morning, culled a few facts that anyone else could have easily gotten too, and then rubbed out the chapter in the afternoon. There was no personal insight, no real feel for his material, and he gets some key facts dead wrong. For example, he says that Steve Callahan managed to kill a four foot dolphin and eat it. But Kamler obviously thinks this is a mammalian dolphin, and not the dolphin-fish (dorado) that is so prevalent in tropical waters. Any blue water sailor would have recognized that.
The other chapters, with the semi-exception of the one on mountaineering where Kamler had personal experience, display a similar lack of depth and detail. It all becomes very superficial, and to anyone familiar with such situations or at least the extant literature on them, it achieves a remarkable feat: Kamler takes a fascinating subject and makes it boring.
I suspect the doctor wrote some good initial passages, got a publisher involved, then just ran out of gas. I am enthralled by the subjects of anatomy, survival, ultra-endurance, and human adaptation to our environment. But Kamler's work put me to sleep. On certain subjects, such as immunological response, Kamler merely says it is not well understood and leaves it at that. Jeez, Doc, you promote yourself as the expert - take a shot at it, yeah? At least get your hands dirty. Some suggestions: to write about "the limits of human endurance" in the desert, instead of reading about it perhaps the good doctor should leave New York and experience the 135-mile Badwater Run, from Death Valley to Mount Whitney. Instead of reading about open ocean survival, perhaps the author should actually sail across an ocean (one with dorados, for example). I want to know what goes on in the mind and body of a person at the limit of their endurance. I want to know the chemical and emotional changes that make such endurance possible. And I want the doctor to use his own experience in such situations to give me insight into how the body is able to deal with physical and mental stress. Instead, Kamler throws a few facts and cliches at the reader and moves on. Maybe Larry King was calling.
If you have never read anything in this field, the book is not a bad introduction. For anyone else it is a disappointment. And for people who have actually experienced the situations Kamler tries to describe, the book is largely a waste of time and could legitimately be called a rip-off.
Fun & Informative May 3, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
For those unfamiliar with the author, Kenneth Kalmer was the only doctor on Mt Everest during the 1996 tragedy. This book touches on human physiology and how we adapt to and tolerate extremes in environmental conditions. It contains valuable information with which every adventurer should be acquainted. Though it is written for the layman, this is certainly not the kind of book you can read just before going to sleep. It's pretty heavy on scientific principles.
Dr Kalmer begins with the jungle environment, namely the Amazon forest and swamps. Though heat exhaustion can be a problem here, most of the hazards of this environment seem to come from the denizens of the jungle. Survivors in this environment need to keep a constant lookout for the anopheles mosquito (malaria), black caiman, anaconda, venomous snakes, poisonous frogs and caterpillars, schisto worm (liver parasite), stingray, electric eel and a most interesting creature called the candiru. This is actually a very tiny catfish which has a great affinity for salt. When an animal urinates under water, this tiny creature will follow the stream of urine and lodge itself in the animal's urethra. Surgery is required to remove it.
Ironically, the jungle is also a natural pharmacy that provides medicines to heal the sick as well as poisons for blowdart hunting. No wonder people still live there.
The next hostile environment is the open sea - endless stretches of water, not a drop of which can keep the castaway's body hydrated. Dr Kalmer gives many examples of how castaways survive. The world record is held by Chinese sailor Poon Lim, who drifted on a raft for 130 days without supplies. He collected rain water and used a spring in his torch to catch fish. Methods thought up by other survivors include using improvised solar-powered stoves to distill seawater. The physiology of salt intake, dehydration and starvation are presented along with some coverage on cannibalism at sea.
The scorching desert is an even more hostile environment that causes heat exhaustion, dehydration and starvation to set in even more rapidly. Dr Kalmer explains in detail how the body regulates temperature and maintains a constant internal environment. He also explains how this system can break down under extreme external temperature and dehydration. Death occurs with the loss of 15-20 litres of body fluids. However, defying the limits of human physiology, is one Mauro Prosperi, who claimed to have survived for 9 days in the desert without any water.
Diving medicine is a very big topic by itself, but Dr Kalmer gives us the essentials on what happens to the body during free diving, the mechanics of SCUBA as well as the causes of decompression sickness. As with the other environments, many examples of diving accidents along with a microscopic view of what went on inside the victims' bodies are presented.
High altitude medicine is one area where Dr Kalmer has the most firsthand experience. Bringing out actual situations he encountered on Himalayan expeditions, the author presents a flowing account of Himalayan expeditions alongside an "insiders'" view of the characters' bodies. The mechanics of AMS (acute mountain sickness), HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema), HACE (high altitude cerebral edema) and frostbite are neatly woven into the story. Dr Kalmer even proposes a somewhat controversial evolutionary advantage that the Sherpas may have over other people. Even more surprising but factually indisputable, is his mention of the "miraculous" survival of Beck Weathers and Pasang Sherpa.
The final chapter is really out of this world - space adventure. Space is the ultimate hostile environment combining extreme cold, extreme heat, vacuum and cosmic radiation from which the human body must be almost completely insulated. Topics covered include the physiological effects of G force and zero gravity. Also mentioned are research projects into building self-sufficient spacecrafts for interplanetary exploration. Interesting hypothetical situations are presented and Dr Kalmer manages not to bore the reader with his wit and humour.
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