Kategoria BISAC: Medical >> History

A successor to his popular book A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, this new collection of essays by Jan Bondeson illustrates various anomalies of human development, the lives of the remarkable individuals concerned, and social reactions to their extraordinary bodies.

Bondeson examines historical cases of dwarfism, extreme corpulence, giantism, conjoined twins, dicephaly, and extreme hairiness; his broader theme, however, is the infinite range of human experience. The dicephalous Tocci brothers and Lazarus Colloredo (from whose belly grew his malformed conjoined twin), the Swedish...

Since it was first published in 1955, "A Short History of Medicine" has been hailed as the best available book of its kind: a concise and readable introduction to the history of medicine, written for students and professionals alike. This revised edition of Erwin H. Ackerknecht's classic volume is now available in paperback, making the book especially suitable for classroom use.

W. Goodall and Margaret Pelling, this book sets forth Williams Budd's thoughts on typhoid by reference to an unsuccessful essay he submitted for the Thackeray Prize in 1840.

How did the challenge and the timetable of America's westward expansion affect American medical practice? What have the principles and obligations of American democracy brought to the character of American medicine? How have America's geography and climate, as well as its racial and economic diversity, led to differing outlooks on health and medicine?

Medicine in America James Cassedy explores America's medical -distinctiveness- and follows medical and health-related matters from colonial times to the present. Through four chronological chapters, Cassedy focuses on broad aspects of...

Owsei Temkin presents the history of epilepsy in Western civilization from ancient times to the beginnings of modern neurology. First published in 1945 and thoroughly revised in 1971, this classic work by one of the history of medicine's most eminent scholars now returns to print in a new softcover edition.

Tuberculosis--once the cause of as many as one in five deaths in the U.S.--crossed all boundaries of class and gender, but the methods of treatment for men and women differed radically. While men were encouraged to go out to sea or to the open country, women were expected to stay at home, surrounded by family, to anticipate a lingering death. Several women, however, chose rather to head for the drier climates of the West and build new lives on their own. But with the discovery of the tubercle bacillus in 1882 and the establishment of sanatoriums, both men and women were relegated to lives...

How did use of medical technology such as urinalyses, blood tests, and x-ray machines change patient care in early-twentieth-century American hospitals? To what extent was the use of new machines influenced by the ideas of scientific medicine and to what extent by the availability of newly structured facilities and trained personnel? Drawing on the medical treatment of more than 2,000 patients in Pennsylvania and New York hospitals, Howell traces the ways in which medical technology was used, not merely how it was talked about. He utilizes a wide range of sources--including medical texts,...

Medical historians have traditionally claimed that modern hospitals emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Premodern hospitals, according to many scholars, existed mainly as refuges for the desperately poor and sick, providing patients with little or no medical care. Challenging this view in a compelling survey of hospitals in the East Roman Empire, Timothy Miller traces the birth and development of Byzantine xenones, or hospitals, from their emergence in the fourth century to their decline in the fifteenth century, just prior to the Turkish conquest of...

Most religious traditions have a rich, if largely forgotten, heritage of involvement in medical issues of life, death, and health. Religious values influence our behavior and attitudes toward sickness, sexuality, and lifestyle, to say nothing of more controversial subjects such as abortion and euthanasia. The essays in this important book illuminate the history of health and medicine within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Bringing together 20 original articles by expert scholars in the fields of the history of religion and the history of medicine, Caring and Curing provides a...

American hospitals are unique: a combination of public and private institutions that are at once charities and businesses, social welfare institutions and icons of U.S. science, wealth, and technical achievement. In Sickness and in Wealth helps us understand this huge and often contradictory -industry- and shows that throughout this century the voluntary not-for-profit hospitals have been profit-maximizing enterprises, even though they have viewed themselves as charities serving the community. Although our hospitals have provided the most advanced medical care for acutely sick and...

In The Empty Cradle, Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner delve into the origins of the many misconceptions surrounding infertility as they explore how medical and cultural beliefs emerged throughout its controversial history. Drawing on a wide variety of sources--including intimate diaries and letters, patient records, memoirs, medical literature, and popular magazines-- The Empty Cradle investigates the social, cultural, scientific, and medical dimensions of infertility over the past three hundred years.

Marsh and Ronner explore reactions--among both physicians and...

Face lifts, nose jobs, breast implants, liposuction, collagen injections--the body at the end of the twentieth century has become endlessly mutable, and surgical alteration has become an accepted part of American culture. In Venus Envy, Elizabeth Haiken traces the quest for physical perfection through surgery from the turn of the century to the present. Drawing on a wide array of sources--personal accounts, medical records, popular magazines, medical journals, and beauty guides--Haiken reveals how our culture came to see cosmetic surgery as a panacea for both individual and social...

In Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds Darrel Amundsen explores the disputed boundaries of medicine and Christianity by focusing on the principle of the sanctity of human life, including the duty to treat or attempt to sustain the life of the ill. As he examines his themes and moves from text to context, Amundsen clarifies a number of Christian principles in relation to bioethical issues that are hotly debated today. In his examination of the moral stance of the earliest syphilographers, for example, he finds insights into the ethical issues surrounding...

In Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States, Margaret Humphreys presents the first book-length account of the parasitic, insect-borne disease that has infected millions and influenced settlement patterns, economic development, and the quality of life at every level of American society, especially in the south.

Humphreys approaches malaria from three perspectives: the parasite's biological history, the medical response to it, and the patient's experience of the disease. It addresses numerous questions including how the parasite thrives and eventually...

Until this century, most medications prescribed by physicians were pharmacologically inert, if not harmful. That is, physicians were prescribing placebos or worse without knowing it. In a sense, then, the history of medical treatment until relatively recently is the history of the placebo effect. Based on the authors' lifelong study and clinical research, this is a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the placebo effect. The authors begin by surveying the use of placebos from antiquity to modern times. They also examine the development, use, and validity of the double-blind,...