The Greatest Benefit to Mankind
A Medical History of Humanity
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- 17,99 €
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- 17,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
This edition does not include illustrations.
A definitive study of the history of medicine, from the earliest humans to the present day.
Medicine is advancing at an incredible rate. We now have the ability to overcome sickness but also to transform the nature of life itself: in many parts of the world, human existence has simply ceased to be ‘nasty, brutish and short’. In this titanic history of medicine and disease, Roy Porter examines the traditions of East and West to chart how this revolution has come about.
Covering medical milestones big and small – from dissection to surgery and from anaesthesia to AIDS – Roy Porter’s masterpiece is both a superlative history of medicine and a sweeping survey of human life and death.
Reviews
‘A superb book – fluent, lucid, scary and even funny…essential reading.’ Sunday Times
‘Magnificently erudite and compellingly humane.’ New Statesman (Books of the Year)
‘Yet another compulsively readable, astonishingly encyclopaedic book from Roy Porter…his best to date: an epic, one-volume narrative history of man’s struggle with the infirmities of his body, from Aesculapius to AIDS.’ Simon Schama
‘Whether you are interested in the advent of the stethoscope, the history of yellow fever, the bubonic plague or, closer to home, coronary heart disease, the feminist influence on medicine, drug abuse, childbearing or cancer, this book provides the historic background to these and other medical questions…”The Greatest Benefit to Mankind” is a first-class introduction to medical history. Like a well constructed broadsheet leader, it excites thought and discussion, as well as providing many answers.’ The Times
‘Hypochondriac heaven – a gripping, scholarly, fact-packed, must-have book.’ Daily Mail
‘A monumental work… magnificent.’ Independent on Sunday
About the author
Roy Porter is Professor of the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He is the editor of the Fontana History of Science series, and the author of over sixty-five books, including the acclaimed bestseller ‘London: A Social History’. His book on the history of madness in England, ‘Mind Forg’d Manacles’, won the Leo Gershoy Prize.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Porter's magisterial chronicle of medical thinking and practice deserves the popularity of his bestselling London: A Social History. Neither demonizing nor glorifying modern high-tech medicine, his epic history underscores the enormous progress achieved when Western medical science, by dint of anatomical and physiological investigations beginning in the Renaissance, broke decisively with the world's traditional medical systems--ancient Greek, Chinese, Indian Ayurvedic, herbalism, and the like--which viewed health as a precarious balance among the body, the universe and society. At the same time, he is nonjudgmental, examining each healing system on its own terms for possible value today. Although the scope of Porter's account of physicians, theories, advances and diseases can be daunting, he leavens his presentation with allusions to Moliere, Boccaccio, Swift, Pepys and Maugham, and extends his analysis of medicine's social dimensions to patient-doctor relations, medical responses to insanity, the influx of women healers into a male monopoly, the politics of public health and the intertwining of medicine with colonization, conquest, urban growth and religion. Finally, he weights the breakthroughs of the last 50 years in genetics, immunology, bacteriology and psychopharmacology against a record of disastrous drugs, iatrogenic (physician-induced) illness, medicalization of normal events, unequal access to health care, emerging lethal viral diseases and the intractability of chronic disorders. His diagnoses: modern medicine urgently needs to redefine its goals and priorities. Written with storytelling flair and erudition, this study will be of interest to laypersons and professionals alike. Porter is a professor of the social history of medicine in London. Illustrated.