![]() ![]() In stylish prose, he paints a panoramic picture filled with memorable anecdotes, apt quotes, startling statistics, and sobering conclusions. The influence of French hospitals on medical education how German laboratories created a new pathology, physiology, and pharmacology the development of specialization public health measures medicine’s role in the expansion of imperial powers-all are included. The accomplishments of individuals are here-Harvey, Koch, Pasteur, Lister, Freud., etc.-but Porter does not tell history simply through great men. He explores its foundations in ancient Greece and Rome, the impact of the new science of the Renaissance, and the initial failure of biomedical findings to deliver effective new therapies. ![]() While he looks at medicine in early societies, and Islamic, Indian, and Chinese medicine, his focus is on Western medicine, which he finds uniquely powerful and now uniquely global. ![]() A learned, lively history of medicine “from Stone Age to New Age, from Galen to Gallo.- Unable to find a modern, readable, one-volume history of medicine for his students, Porter (A Social History of Madness, 1988, etc.), of London’s Wellcome Institute for the History of Science, has filled that gap admirably with this fascinating survey of medical theory and practice through the centuries. ![]()
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