GREATEST BENEFIT TO MANKIND PA

by Porter, Roy

• ISBN13: 9780393319804
• ISBN10: 0393319806
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-10-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Hailed as "a remarkable achievement" ( Boston Sunday Globe ) and as "a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking . . . a splendid and thoroughly engrossing book" ( Los Angeles Times ), Roy Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords us an opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to mankind. Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, covering ground from the diseases of the hunter-gatherers to today's threat of AIDS and ebola, from the clearly defined conviction of the Hippocratic oath to the muddy ethical dilemmas of modern-day medicine. Offering up a treasure trove of historical surprises along the way, this book "has instantly become the standard single-volume work in its field" ( The Lancet ). "The author's perceptiveness is, as usual, scalpel-sharp; his manner genially bedside; his erudition invigorating." - Simon Schama

Author Biography

Roy Porter is professor of the social history of medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Science.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
List of Illustrations	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Introduction	p. 3
The Roots of Medicine	p. 14
Antiquity	p. 44
Medicine and Faith	p. 83
The Medieval West	p. 106
Indian Medicine	p. 135
Chinese Medicine	p. 147
Renaissance	p. 163
The New Science	p. 201
Enlightenment	p. 245
Scientific Medicine in the Nineteenth Century	p. 304
Nineteenth-Century Medical Care	p. 348
Public Medicine	p. 397
From Pasteur to Penicillin	p. 428
Tropical Medicine, World Diseases	p. 462
Psychiatry	p. 493
Medical Research	p. 525
Clinical Science	p. 561
Surgery	p. 597
Medicine, State and Society	p. 628
Medicine and the People	p. 668
The Past, the Present and the Future	p. 710
Further Reading	p. 719
Index	p. 765
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