Medicine and Western Civilization / Edition 1

by Stephanie Kiceluk, David J. Rothman, Steven Marcus

Overview

This fabulous anthology is sure to be a core text for history of medicine and social science classes in colleges across the country. In order to demonstrate how medical research has influenced Western cultural perspectives, the editors have collected original works from 61 different authors around nine major themes (among them "Anatomy and Destiny," "Psyche and Soma," and "The Construction of Pain, Suffering, and Death"). The authors range from Aristotle, the Bible, and Louis Pasteur, to Masters and Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and Simone de Beauvoir. The primary sources selected to illustrate the themes are well chosen and contrast with each other nicely. However, the brief background material for the selections center around the authors and offer little or no discussion about the selections' relevance to the topics at hand. This book would be best read in a class or group where the texts' meaning in relation to each other can be discussed, but the book can stand alone if the reader is prepared to do some critical thinking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813521909
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	12/01/1995
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	717,420
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.20(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1 The Human Form Divine
Part 2 The Body Secularized
Part 3 Anatomy and Destiny
Part 4 Psyche and Soma
Part 5 The Contaminated and the Pure
Part 6 The Healer
Part 7 The Experimenter
Part 8 The Institutionalization of Doctors and Patients
Part 9 The Construction of Pain, Suffering, and Death 
Index

Editorial Reviews

This fabulous anthology is sure to be a core text for history of medicine and social science classes in colleges across the country. In order to demonstrate how medical research has influenced Western cultural perspectives, the editors have collected original works from 61 different authors around nine major themes (among them "Anatomy and Destiny," "Psyche and Soma," and "The Construction of Pain, Suffering, and Death"). The authors range from Aristotle, the Bible, and Louis Pasteur, to Masters and Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and Simone de Beauvoir. The primary sources selected to illustrate the themes are well chosen and contrast with each other nicely. However, the brief background material for the selections center around the authors and offer little or no discussion about the selections' relevance to the topics at hand. This book would be best read in a class or group where the texts' meaning in relation to each other can be discussed, but the book can stand alone if the reader is prepared to do some critical thinking. Recommended for academic libraries.-Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., Chicago

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