Medicine in Society
Historical Essays

These essays synthesises many of the most significant findings of recent research from ancient Greece to the present day.

Andrew Wear (Edited by)

9780521336390, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 February 1992

408 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm, 0.65 kg

"...includes essays that cover the social history of medicine from antiquity to the present in Western Europe...generally first-rate introductions to their subject matter and so are useful for students and scholars alike...many of the most important themes discussed in the Anglo-American world medical history are treated in a clear, lively, and inclusive manner. Harold J. Cook, ISIS

The social history of medicine over the last fifteen years has redrawn the boundaries of medical history. Specialised papers and monographs have contributed to our knowledge of how medicine has affected society and how society has shaped medicine. This book synthesises, through a series of essays, some of the most significant findings of this 'new social history' of medicine. The period covered ranges from ancient Greece to the present time. While coverage is not exhaustive, the reader is able to trace how medicine in the West developed from an unlicensed open market place, with many different types of practitioners in the classical period, to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century professionalised medicine of State influence, of hospitals, public health medicine, and scientific medicine. The book also covers innovatory topics such as patient-doctor relationships, the history of the asylum, and the demographic background to the history of medicine.

1. Introduction Andrew Wear
2. Healers in the medical market place: towards a social history of Graeco-Roman medicine Vivian Nutton
3. Medicine and society in medieval Europe, 500–1500 Katharine Park
4. The patient in England, c. 1660–c. 1800 Roy Porter
5. Making sense of health and the environment in early modern England Andrew Wear
6. Medicine in the age of Enlightenment Guenter B. Granshaw
7. The rise of the modern hospital in Britain Lindsay Granshaw
8. Medical practitioners 1750–1850 and the period of medical reform in Britain Irvine Loudon
9. Public health, preventive medicine and professionalization: England and America in the nineteenth century Elizabeth Fee and Dorothy Porter
10. Madness and its institutions Roy Porter
11. From infectious to chronic diseases: changing patterns of sickness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Paul Weindling
12. Providers, 'consumers', the state and the delivery of health care services in twentieth-century Britain Jane Lewis
13. The implications of increased life expectancy for family and social life Arthur E. Imhof
Index.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]