LIKE EVERY other genre in the bookstores of Dublin, Cork and Galway, or should I say Newry, the health and medically related volumes are hanging off the shelves desperate for the oxygen from your hard-earned wallet.
And, for the most part, there are some seriously interesting attractions to get you thinking over Christmas and into the New Year.
So, without further ado, here are some of the best of what's available.
First up, and fittingly so, are a number of books on Charles Darwin's theories and where we might have come from. In case you don't know already, 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (February 12th) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species (November 24th), and not surprisingly the booksellers are onto it already.
Charles Darwin's Evolutionary Writing (Oxford University Press, price £12.99) edited by James A Second - director of the Darwin Correspondence Project and professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge - gathers chapters from Darwin's Journal of Researches on the Beagle voyage (1845) and Origin of Species (1859) and Decent of Man (1871) and includes his full autobiography.
It's a tight well laid-out introduction to Darwinism that will encourage you to go looking for more.
On a similar theme, 99% Ape - How Evolution Adds Up (National History Museum, £14.99), edited by Jonathon Silvertown, is as much about DNA, the design of our eyes and chromosome choreography as it is about evolution. It's also smart, up-to-date and thoughtful, exploring that crucial 1 per cent difference that makes us human and them chimps.
Moving on to women's health, Women's Health For Life - Medical Advice You Can Trust (Dorling Kindersley, £20), edited by Dr Sarah Jarvis, is a comprehensive guide to all things feminine from understanding how bodies change through the ages to diagnosing the worrying symptoms that can affect lives.
With chapters on the reproductive system, breast health, heart and circulation, among many others, it's got enough information to arm you for your money's worth in the doctor's surgery.
More specifically, Tim Betts and Harriet Clarke's Epilepsy in Woman (Oxford University Press, £11.99) is a pocket-book design that gets quickly and succinctly to the substantive topic summarising the important concepts covered in numerous case histories and patient perspectives.
There is also valuable suggested further reading and a glossary of epilepsy drugs.
Sticking with women, Florence Nightingale - The Woman and Her Legend (Viking, £25), by Mark Bostridge, tells the story of the world's most famous nurse after Ratched and Betty.
While Nightingale's heroics at Scutari and during the Crimea are legendary, Bostridge, having uncovered new evidence, maintains that this most celebrated nurse may have suffered from a chronic form of brucellosis - an infection contracted from unpasteurised milk - that might explain the severe and manic depression, aggression and mood swings that troubled her throughout her career.
As the first biography of Nightingale in 50-odd years, it's also a very worthwhile revisit to Nightingale's enlightened views on hygiene and the mismanagement of the health services that are as valid today as they were in her hay-day in the 19th century.
Staying with biography, mentioning The Making of Mr Gray's Anatomy - Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame (Oxford University Press, £16.99) by Ruth Richardson to a modern audience would nearly have most people interested in knowing how, for instance, Ellen Pompeo got the part of Meredith Grey in the popular television series.
The clue of course is in the spelling of Gray, obviously telling you that this is the story of physiologist Henry Gray and his authoritative textbook for medical students.
However, as Richardson points out in her well-researched work that casts new insights into how the book came about, it's also the story of illustrator Henry Vandyke Carter and the publishers J W Parker and Son whose collaboration contributed to the phenomenal success of Grey's Anatomy, and it's one of the highlights worth reading over the festive season.
Going from medical authorities to the germs that live in society, Living with Enza - The Forgotten Story of Britain and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 (Macmillan, £16.99), by Mark Honigsbaum, is a short intimate recollection of the infamous pandemic that Honigsbaum acknowledges sent 228,000 Britons (nearly as many as those who died taking Passchendaele during the Third Battle of Ypres) and 50 million worldwide to their deaths.
Inspired by events surrounding the furore over the avian influenza H5N1, Honigsbaum goes in search of the reasons why the 1918 pandemic has largely been erased from society's memory, scrutinising unpublished testimonies from survivors and memoirs from doctors and civil servants.
Very informative and easy to read, it takes its title from the old skipping rhyme - "I had a little bird, its name was Enza. I opened the window, and in-flu-enza."
On a similar beat, Carl Zimmer's Microcosm - E.coli and the New Science of Life (William Heinemann, £20), while a little bit more wordy than you'd like, is still a fine examination of Escherichia coli that's not only a lethal strain in food poisoning, but, as Zimmer points out, is also a prism to gauge and understand what life was and will become, and how related evidence supports the theory of natural selection.
'To drugs of all sorts, The Poison Paradox - Chemicals as Friends and Foes (Oxford University Press, £12.99), by John Timbrell, is an excellent introduction to the science of toxicology that scatters the myth that man-made chemicals are no-nos and that natural ones are to be embraced, while running an eye over the issues involving food additives and contaminants.
Looking at environmental contaminants, industrial chemicals, household poisons and popular drugs, Timbrell goes on to investigate the real risks, and how they are assessed and managed, the best parts scary enough to change the way you live and certainly what you eat.
Topically, it's also got a really good section on toxins, the Belgian poultry scandal, the Michigan farm disaster and a number of other major scares that you feel are only waiting to be investigated.
Getting a little bit gorier, A Matter of Life and Death - Conversations with Pathologists (Dundee University Press, £12.99), by Sue Armstrong, isn't initially the first book you might go for over the Christmas stampede.
However, it's a fascinating exposure of the work of 14 pathologists from around the world - Europe, the US, South Africa and Latin America - with Armstrong asking most of the questions you'd wished you'd asked Quincy, focusing on subjects such as Aids in East Africa to doubts about the existence of shaken baby syndrome.
Into the philosophical trenches, Trusting Doctors - The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine (Princeton University Press, £17.95), by Jonathan B Imber, paints a poor picture of American medicine which has lost the trust of patients.
Arguing that the development of patients' faith in doctors was originally inspired and influenced by 19th and early 20th century Protestant and Catholic clergymen, Imber asserts that as the clergy's influence has waned, and as reliance on medical technology has increased, patients' trust in doctors has also steadily declined.
Timber goes on to acknowledge that as modern medicine becomes defined by specialisation, technology, profit and more apprehensive patients, the future for a renewed trust in doctors is being seriously challenged. One wonders if there are echoes in Ireland?
Next door in psychiatry, Morten L Kringelbach The Pleasure Center - Trust Your Animal Instincts (Oxford University Press, £13.99) puts a few teeth on his belief that what we desire or what pleases us - our animalistic tendencies - are actually very important sources of information.
So good are they that understanding them can make us much more rational and effective people.
Dipping his toes into the conundrum of pleasure, desire and emotion, Kringelbach takes us through the gambit of human experience showing us, for instance, how emotion fuels our interest allowing us to be more observant and better learners.
Unfortunately, it's well-written neuroscience for restless unhappy people who probably won't have the desire to read it.
On the same shelf, Daniel M Haybron's The Pursuit of Unhappiness - The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, £30) suggests it is going in the opposite direction tackling the philosophical cul-de-sac of unhappiness but spends most of its time unearthing a theory of happiness that is both insightful and imaginative. A serious pleasurable read for those happy enough to explore a difficult subject.
A lot less dense, Daniel and Jason Freeman's Paranoia - The 21st Century Fear (Oxford University Press, £9.99) is another pocket-filler that highlights the astonishing prevalence of paranoia in society while catching a hold of what paranoia is, what causes it, and what feelings it can generate.
Taking a scientific perspective, it's accessible and authoritative at the same time, while acknowledging - and this is the best bit - that it was planned in the Rookery Stand at Watford football club. Paranoid or what?
A little off the wall Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*! (Viking, £20), by Art Spiegelman, is a series of picture-box cartoons that illustrate the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist's nervous breakdown, his experiments with psychedelic drugs, his mother's suicide and his time incarcerated in a mental hospital.
Graphic, in your face and needless to say for adults only, it captures all of the subtle, if disturbing, nuances of a dysfunctional society that words on their own often fail to explain. It's also very funny in places, proving a long-held belief that all the best humour is wrapped in personal tragedy.
On more general terms, the British Medical Association has re-issued its A-Z Family Medical Encyclopedia Fifth Edition (Dorling Kindersley, £25), which, while no substitute for a visit to the doctor, is a bible of introductory knowledge giving you enough information to get a grip on what might or might not be wrong with you.
Finally, Louis Cozolino's The Healthy Aging Brain - Sustaining Attachment, Attaining Wisdom (WW Norton, £22) turns on its head the notion that brain development fits into the realm of early childhood development, and puts forward the thesis that the brain continues to develop through adulthood.
Explaining the social brain over time, emphasising neural plasticity and growth, and maintaining that "brains are expensive organs that need to be utilised" Cozolino, professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, offers readers skills and strategies for maintaining and enhancing a healthy brain into later life.