Description: The Cambridge History of Medicine, first published in 2006, 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, while at the same time engaging with the issues, discoveries, and controversies that have beset and characterized medical progress. The authors weave a narrative that connects disease, doctors, primary care, surgery, the rise of hospitals, drug treatment and pharmacology, mental illness and psychiatry. This volume emphasizes the crucial developments of the past 150 years, but also examines classical, medieval, and Islamic and East Asian medicine. Authoritative and accessible, The Cambridge History of Medicine is for readers wanting a lively and informative introduction to medical history.
Brief description: Roy Porter (1946-2002), Professor Emeritus of the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine at University College London, was the author of over 200 books and articles, including Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late Enlightenment England (1991), London: A Social History (1994), The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (1997), and Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 (2001).
Review Quotes: "It is a book by historians about the social and scientific history of medicine. It gives special attention to the past 200 years but also surveys primitive medicine, dating to prehistory. The book is both lucid and readable and ought to be of wide interest."
New England Journal of Medicine, Robert N. Tyson, M.D., University of Washington