A history of the nineteenth-century epidemic and a "skillful, absorbing presentation of the background and the effects of this dread disease" ( The New York Times).Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as the plague had been for the fourteenth. Its defeat was a reflection not only of progress in medical knowledge but of enduring changes in American social thought. In this book Charles Rosenberg has focused his study on New Yor...

The renowned medical historian examines the current tensions in American healthcare in this "cogently written and well documented" book ( Choice).In Our Present Complaint, Charles E. Rosenberg examines today's dilemmas in American medicine within their historical and social contexts. He begins with an insightful look at the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its mo...

Finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in History.“[A] splendid history of the hospital in America... What makes this an important book is that Mr. Rosenberg has managed to tell the story of the hospital as a microcosm of American society... It is remarkable that an institution so central to our society, and to our medical system as the hospital has been for the last 100 years, has had to wait so long for a general historical analysis. It is Mr. Rosenberg’s accomplishment that the wa...

A bestselling history of medicine, enriched with a new foreword, concluding essay, and bibliographic essay.Erwin H. Ackerknecht’s A Short History of Medicine is a concise narrative, long appreciated by students in the history of medicine, medical students, historians, and medical professionals as well as all those seeking to understand the history of medicine.Covering the broad sweep of discoveries from parasitic worms to bacilli and x-rays, and hi...

Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as the plague had been for the fourteenth. Its defeat was a reflection not only of progress in medical knowledge but of enduring changes in American social thought. Rosenberg has focused his study on New York City, the most highly developed center of this new society. Carefully documented, full of descriptive detail, yet written with an urgent sense of the drama of the epidemic years, this narrative is as absorbing for gen...

This compelling book brings together many of the major papers published by Andrew Scull in the history of psychiatry over the past decade and a half.Examining some of the major substantive debates in the field from the eighteenth century to the present, the historiographic essays provide a critical perspective on such major figures as Michel Foucault, Roy Porter and Edward Shorter.Chapters on psychiatric therapeutics and on the shifting social responses to madness over a pe...

'A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature ... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying' Daily TelegraphRecently many people have assumed that we are blank slates shaped by our environment. But this denies the heart of our being: human nature. Violence is not just a product of society; male and female minds are different; the genes we give our children shape them more than our parenting practices. To acknowledge our inna...

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book."[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times...

Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose thei...

During the Crimean War British soldiers developed an affinity for tobacco smoke. Upon returning to Great Britain they brought with them the habit of smoking tobacco. The proliferation of smoking sparked the first public debate about its effects. Beginning in 1857, this passionate debate of those both for and against the use of tobacco was laid out in the British Medical Journal The Lancet. Ultimately the Controversy led to no immediate results, but it acted as an introduction to the real a...

How Doctors Think defines the nature and importance of clinical judgment. Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science but rather an interpretive practice that relies on clinical reasoning. A physician looks at the patient's history along with the presenting physical signs and symptoms and juxtaposes these with clinical experience and empirical studies to construct a tentative account of the illness. How Doctors Think is ...

The classic work on women's health and how the medical establishment helped to justify sexism, by the authors of Witches, Midwives, and Nurses.From Barbara Ehrenrich, New York Times-bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, Bright-Sided, and other titles, and Deirdre English, former editor of Mother Jones, this book delves into the history of how women have been diagnosed, defined, and often dismissed, by doctors, a proble...