Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17400 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
'Nobody will be able to put down this short history of medicine... without counting their blessings. Never have I read a book which made me so glad not to have been born before the mid-20th century.' Daily Mail

About the Author
Roy Porter was until his retirement Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He last book ENLIGHTENMENT won a 2001 Wolfson Prize. Roy Porter died March 3rd 2002.

Customer Reviews

A quick and unsettling read
In a sense this is a "lite" version of the late Roy Porter's well-received history of medicine from 1997, entitled The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. He is also the editor of The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine (1996) and was until his death professor of social history at University College London.

But let's face it, the history of medicine has not been a pretty story, nor could it have been. Most of history's physicians were flailing about in the dark, the surgeons as sawbones and barbers performing crude amputations and such without the aid of either anaesthetics or disinfectants, the practitioners as faith healers and quacks, dispensing placebos or poisons often without knowing which was which. It wasn't until the late 19th century that the medical profession began to achieve some understanding of the real causes of illness and indeed understand how living things work and how and why they don't work. Porter recalls some of the controversies about the vivisection of cadavers, and arguments about the causes of infectious disease: an argument made difficult because of course the microbes could not be discerned until about the time of Pasteur.

Porter outlines this sobering story from the time of the Greeks to the present day in an objective and easily assimilated style. He organizes the material into eight chapters focusing on Disease, Doctors, The Body, The Laboratory, Therapies, Surgery, The Hospital, and Medicine in Modern Society. Along the way he delves into the politics (some sexual) and into the sociology of medicine around the globe. There are suggestions for Further Reading and an Index.

There are also about 40 rather appalling (some amusing) illustrations from previous centuries in this (for a change) accurately named little tome, showing the horrors of past medical practices. They enliven Porter's text, but you may need a magnifying glass to catch all the nuances--as though you might want to do that!--since some of the prints, while small enough to fit the page are not large enough for the unaided eye.

In short, this is a quick and unsettling read that may make the reader wonder about how future generations will view some of the medical procedures practiced today.

Informative but brief account of medical history
This book does not have lots of blood and guts in it. What it does have is a series of linked episodes that together describe the history behind many medical practises still in use today.

The story the book is trying to put across relates to societies attitude to medicine and surgery as well as the treatments that went with them.

It shows that in many ways society is just as prudish as it was hundreds of years ago in how it feels about medical practise.

The book can be read in sections to cover each turn of the medical establishment in line with social prejudice.

An easy read, and a book that can be dipped into a chapter or to at a time for bedtime reading.

Wow
What can I say, I could hardly put this book down! Its a facinating look at medicine's development throughout the centuries right back from cave man times up to modern day diagnostic techniques for diseases such as AIDS and SARS. I would recomend it to any student doing a science course,not just medicine and it even would be of interest to those just interested in the subject as it does not contain too much technical jargon.

A definate read!