At a time when medical care for the people of the United States is undergoing wrenching change due mainly to vast and costly technological progress, doctors have had to cede much of their initiative and responsibility to third parties. Medicine has become a commercial enterprise. Patients must affiliate themselves with a managed health care organization in order to have access to their doctors. In the hurly-burly of today's techno-medicine, many physicians are too busy to spend time in dialogue with their patients. As a consequence, social and emotional circumstances that have been...

Medical sociologists have long recognized the importance of community and family structure in the health of individuals. However, the past quarter century in America has seen an increasing emphasis on individualism and materialism that has effectively diminished the cohesiveness and emotional support provided by these basic social units. The Power of Clan examines the health effects of social change in a largely Italian-American town over a twenty-five-year period and provides substantial evidence of the protective effect of family bonds and shared social values against coronary...

Charles Richet was one of the most remarkable figures in the history of medical science. He is best known for his work on the body's immune reactions to foreign substances for which he won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1913. Richet was also a poet, playwright, historian, bibliographer, political activist, classical scholar, and pioneer in aircraft design.

Brain, Mind, and Medicine is the first major biography of Richet in any language. Wolf brilliantly situates Richet's work in the intellectual currents of Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth...