Download or read book Blood and Guts A Short History of Medicine written by Roy Porter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-06-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ideas tumble out of Porter like wonders from some scholarly horn of plenty." —Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic An eminently readable, entertaining romp through the history of our vain and valiant efforts to heal ourselves. Mankind's battle to stay alive and healthy for as long as possible is our oldest, most universal struggle. With his characteristic wit and vastly informed historical scope, Roy Porter examines the war fought between disease and doctors on the battleground of the flesh from ancient times to the present. He explores the many ingenious ways in which we have attempted to overcome disease through the ages: the changing role of doctors, from ancient healers, apothecaries, and blood-letters to today's professionals; the array of drugs, from Ayurvedic remedies to the launch of Viagra; the advances in surgery, from amputations performed by barbers without anesthetic to today's sophisticated transplants; and the transformation of hospitals from Christian places of convalescence to modern medical powerhouses. Cleverly illustrated with historic line drawings, the chronic ailments of humanity provide vivid anecdotes for Porter's enlightening story of medicine's efforts to prevail over a formidable and ever-changing adversary.
Download or read book Blood and Guts written by Roy Porter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-06-26 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both frightening and elating. Startlingly illustrated, A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDICINE is the ideal presentfor anyone who is keenly aware of their own mortality and wants to do something about it. It is also a wonderful memorial to one of Penguin's greatest historians.
Download or read book Blood and Guts A Short History of Medicine written by Roy Porter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-06-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of medicine, including the role of doctors, various attempts at controlling disease, and the progress of hospitals.
Download or read book A Short History of Medicine written by Erwin H. Ackerknecht and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestselling history of medicine, enriched with a new foreword, concluding essay, and bibliographic essay. Erwin H. Ackerknecht’s A Short History of Medicine is a concise narrative, long appreciated by students in the history of medicine, medical students, historians, and medical professionals as well as all those seeking to understand the history of medicine. Covering the broad sweep of discoveries from parasitic worms to bacilli and x-rays, and highlighting physicians and scientists from Hippocrates and Galen to Pasteur, Koch, and Roentgen, Ackerknecht narrates Western and Eastern civilization’s work at identifying and curing disease. He follows these discoveries from the library to the bedside, hospital, and laboratory, illuminating how basic biological sciences interacted with clinical practice over time. But his story is more than one of laudable scientific and therapeutic achievement. Ackerknecht also points toward the social, ecological, economic, and political conditions that shape the incidence of disease. Improvements in health, Ackerknecht argues, depend on more than laboratory knowledge: they also require that we improve the lives of ordinary men and women by altering social conditions such as poverty and hunger. This revised and expanded edition includes a new foreword and concluding biographical essay by Charles E. Rosenberg, Ackerknecht’s former student and a distinguished historian of medicine. A new bibliographic essay by Lisa Haushofer explores recent scholarship in the history of medicine.
Download or read book Blood and Guts written by Richard Hollingham and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-12-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously un dreamed of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in thirty seconds—from first cut to final stitch. Innovations such as Joseph Lister's antiseptic technique, the first open-heart surgery, and Walter Freeman's lobotomy operations, among other breakthroughs, are brought to life in these pages in vivid detail. This is popular science writing at it's best.
Download or read book Medicine and Western Civilization written by David J. Rothman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fabulous anthology is sure to be a core text for history of medicine and social science classes in colleges across the country. In order to demonstrate how medical research has influenced Western cultural perspectives, the editors have collected original works from 61 different authors around nine major themes (among them "Anatomy and Destiny," "Psyche and Soma," and "The Construction of Pain, Suffering, and Death"). The authors range from Aristotle, the Bible, and Louis Pasteur, to Masters and Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and Simone de Beauvoir. The primary sources selected to illustrate the themes are well chosen and contrast with each other nicely. However, the brief background material for the selections center around the authors and offer little or no discussion about the selections' relevance to the topics at hand. This book would be best read in a class or group where the texts' meaning in relation to each other can be discussed, but the book can stand alone if the reader is prepared to do some critical thinking.
Download or read book A Brief History of Disease Science and Medicine written by Michael Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 23 informative chapters, Kennedy enlightens readers with scientific articles marking historical milestones in medical science. Written for medical students, young physicians, nurses, and anyone else interested in a broad view of the evolution of the medical profession, it includes 19 illustrations, over 500 footnotes and a 40-page index to assist the reader in searching for specific events and people from the past."--Book jacket.
Download or read book Taking the Medicine written by Druin Burch and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doctors and patients alike trust the medical profession and its therapeutic powers; yet this trust has often been misplaced. Whether prescribing opium or thalidomide, aspirin or antidepressants, doctors have persistently failed to test their favourite ideas - often with catastrophic results. From revolutionary America to Nazi Germany and modern big-pharmaceuticals, this is the unexpected story of just how bad medicine has been, and of its remarkably recent effort to improve. It is the history of well-meaning doctors misled by intuition, of the startling human cost of their mistakes and of the exceptional individuals who have helped make things better. Alarming and optimistic, Taking the Medicine is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why to trust the pills they swallow.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Medicine written by Roy Porter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-05 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, 'The Cambridge History of Medicine' surveys the rise of medicine in the West from classical times to the present. Covering both the social and scientific history of medicine, this volume traces the chronology of key developments and events.
Download or read book The Greatest Benefit to Mankind A Medical History of Humanity The Norton History of Science written by Roy Porter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1999-10-17 with total page 874 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize "A panoramic and perfectly magnificent intellectual history of medicine…This is the book that delivers it all." —Sherwin Nuland, author of How We Die Hailed as "a remarkable achievement" (Boston 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 the more recent threats 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).
Download or read book Typhoid Mary written by Judith Walzer Leavitt and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the forgotten story of Mary Mallon—the real Typhoid Mary—in this humanizing portrait offering a window into the ethical dilemmas of public health policy that continue to haunt us in the COVID era. She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected 22 New Yorkers with typhoid fever through her puddings and cakes; one of them died. Tracked down through epidemiological detective work, she was finally apprehended as she hid behind a barricade of trashcans. To protect the public's health, authorities isolated her on Manhattan’s North Brother Island, where she died some 30 years later. This book tells the remarkable story of Mary Mallon—the real Typhoid Mary. Combining social history with biography, historian Judith Leavitt re-creates early 20th-century New York City, a world of strict class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women. Leavitt engages the reader with the excitement of the early days of microbiology and brings to life the conflicting perspectives of journalists, public health officials, the law, and Mary Mallon herself. Leavitt’s readable account illuminates dilemmas that continue to haunt us in the age of COVID-19. To what degree are we willing to sacrifice individual liberty to protect the public's health? How far should we go? For anyone who is concerned about the threats and quandaries posed by new epidemics, Typhoid Mary is a vivid reminder of the human side of disease and disease control.
Download or read book Flesh in the Age of Reason written by Roy Porter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-01-27 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'As an introduction to early modern thinking and the impact of past ideas on present lives, this book can find few equals and no superiors. Porter is a witty, humane writer with an extraordinary vocabulary and a sparkling sense of fun. Whether he is quoting from obscure medical texts or analysing scabrous diaries, dishing the dirt on long-dead bigwigs or evoking sympathy for human suffering, his grasp is masterly and his erudition appealing. I wish I could read it again for the first time: you can.' Times Educational Supplement, Book of the Week In this startlingly brilliant sequel to the prize-winning ENLIGHTENMENT Roy Porter completes his lifetime's work, offering a magical, enthusiastic and charming account of the writings of some of the most attractive figures ever to write English.
Download or read book Disease Medicine and Society in England 1550 1860 written by Roy Porter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-14 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his short but authoritative study, Roy Porter examines the impact of disease upon the English and their responses to it before the widespread availability and public provision of medical care. Professor Porter incorporates into the revised second edition new perspectives offered by recent research into provincial medical history, the history of childbirth, and women's studies in the social history of medicine. He begins by sketching a picture of the threats posed by disease to population levels and social continuity from Tudor times to the Industrial Revolution, going on to consider the nature and development of the medical profession, attitudes to doctors and disease, and the growing commitment of the state to public health. Drawing together a wide range of often fragmentary material, and providing a detailed annotated bibliography, this book is an important guide to the history of medicine and to English social history.
Download or read book Medicine written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: See the greatest medical breakthroughs come to life through superb illustrations! From ancient herbal medicine to traditional Chinese medicine, take a visual tour throughout the history of medicine with this comprehensive medical reference book. Discover medicine through time! Here’s what you’ll find in this illustrated history book about medicine: • Offers a broad and accessible visual history of medicine — from the first herbal remedies to efforts surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic • Intriguing narratives are illustrated with photographs, paintings and artifacts • Offers a vivid, compelling and informative read written in an engaging and colourful style • Excerpts from documents, diaries and notebooks offer fascinating eyewitness accounts This medicine history book charts fascinating developments in diagnosis, surgery, healing and drugs through the ages. Feature spreads explore key medical concepts in detail and enhance the reader’s understanding of human anatomy, surgical instruments and medical developments. Clear diagrams explain major diseases like cancer, and trace the progression of medical treatment through time, from ancient healing arts to scurvy and smallpox to modern psychiatry. Double-page features tell the story of the men and women involved in the extraordinary evolutions of this scientific field — from Hippocrates to Florence Nightingale. It's the perfect book for medical professionals, students of medicine or anyone with a keen interest in medicine, science or social history.
Download or read book Madness written by Roy Porter and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating story of madness reveals the radically different perceptions of madness and approaches to its treatment, from antiquity to the present day. Roy Porter explores what we really mean by 'madness', covering an enormous range of topics from witches to creative geniuses, electric shock therapy to sexual deviancy, psychoanalysis to prozac. The origins of current debates about how we define and deal with insanity are examined through eyewitness accounts of those treating patients, writers, artists, and the mad themselves.
Download or read book Under the Knife written by Arnold van de Laar and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This is history with a surgeon's touch: deft, incisive and sometimes excruciatingly bloody' The Sunday Times 'Utterly eccentric and riveting' Mail on Sunday 'Eye-opening and, frequently, eye-watering . . . a book that invites readers to peer up the bottoms of kings, into the souls of rock stars and down the ear canals of astronauts' The Daily Telegraph How did a decision made in the operating theatre spark hundreds of conspiracy theories about JFK? How did a backstage joke prove fatal to world-famous escape artist Harry Houdini? How did Queen Victoria change the course of surgical history? Through dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today's sterile, high-tech operating theatres, surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his experience and expertise to tell an incisive history of the past, present and future of surgery. From the dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today's sterile, high-tech operating theatres, Under the Knife is both a rich cultural history, and a modern anatomy class for us all.
Download or read book Anatomies written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
