Greatest Benefit To Mankind PDF Download

Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393319806
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 874

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A new comprehensive book on the history of medicine.

Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393242447
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 872

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Book Description
"To combine enormous knowledge with a delightful style and a highly idiosyncratic point of view is Roy Porter's special gift, and it makes [this] book . . . alive and fascinating and provocative on every page."—Oliver Sacks, M.D. 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: Roy Porter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 833

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Author: Roy Porter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History of medicine
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393243346
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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"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.

Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393324826
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.

Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521864267
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 11

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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.

Author: Perri Klass
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393610004
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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The fight against child mortality that transformed parenting, doctoring, and the way we live. Only one hundred years ago, in even the world’s wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers—of diarrhea, diphtheria, and measles, of scarlet fever and tuberculosis. Throughout history, culture has been shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, and writers such as Louisa May Alcott, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Eugene O’Neill wrote about and mourned them. Not even the powerful and the wealthy could escape: of Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s four children, only one survived to adulthood, and the first billionaire in history, John D. Rockefeller, lost his beloved grandson to scarlet fever. For children of the poor, immigrants, enslaved people and their descendants, the chances of dying were far worse. The steady beating back of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements. Interweaving her own experiences as a medical student and doctor, Perri Klass pays tribute to groundbreaking women doctors like Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and Josephine Baker, and to the nurses, public health advocates, and scientists who brought new approaches and scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. These scientists, healers, reformers, and parents rewrote the human experience so that—for the first time in human memory—early death is now the exception rather than the rule, bringing about a fundamental transformation in society, culture, and family life. Previously published in hardcover as A Good Time to Be Born.

Author: William Bynum
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019921543X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, this i Very Short Introduction/i surveys the history of medicine from classical times to the present. Focussing on the key turning points in the history of Western medicine - such as the advent of hospitals and therise of experimental medicine - but also offering reflections on alternative traditions such as Chinese medicine, Bill Bynum offers insights into medicine's past, while at the same time engaging with contemporary issues, discoveries, and controversies.

Author: Jim Downs
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971728
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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A sweeping global history that looks beyond European urban centers to show how slavery, colonialism, and war propelled the development of modern medicine. Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of LondonÕs 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence NightingaleÕs contributions to the care of soldiers in the Crimean War revolutionized medical hygiene, transforming hospitals from crucibles of infection to sanctuaries of recuperation. Yet histories of individual innovators ignore many key sources of medical knowledge, especially when it comes to the science of infectious disease. Reexamining the foundations of modern medicine, Jim Downs shows that the study of infectious disease depended crucially on the unrecognized contributions of nonconsenting subjectsÑconscripted soldiers, enslaved people, and subjects of empire. Plantations, slave ships, and battlefields were the laboratories in which physicians came to understand the spread of disease. Military doctors learned about the importance of air quality by monitoring Africans confined to the bottom of slave ships. Statisticians charted cholera outbreaks by surveilling Muslims in British-dominated territories returning from their annual pilgrimage. The field hospitals of the Crimean War and the US Civil War were carefully observed experiments in disease transmission. The scientific knowledge derived from discarding and exploiting human life is now the basis of our ability to protect humanity from epidemics. Boldly argued and eye-opening, Maladies of Empire gives a full account of the true price of medical progress.