The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World


Book Description

With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, 'The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World' offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. 0The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy.




Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife


Book Description

The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul. "What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.




Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century


Book Description

Prior to the nineteenth century, the practice of medicine in the Western world was as much art as science. But, argues W. F. Bynum, 'modern' medicine as practiced today is built upon foundations that were firmly established between 1800 and the beginning of World War I. He demonstrates this in terms of concepts, institutions, and professional structures that evolved during this crucial period, applying both a more traditional intellectual approach to the subject and the newer social perspectives developed by recent historians of science and medicine. In a wide-ranging survey, Bynum examines the parallel development of biomedical sciences such as physiology, pathology, bacteriology, and immunology, and of clinical practice and preventive medicine in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Focusing on medicine in the hospitals, the community, and the laboratory, Bynum contends that the impact of science was more striking on the public face of medicine and the diagnostic skills of doctors than it was on their actual therapeutic capacities.




Ancient Medicine


Book Description

The third edition of this magisterial account of medicine in the Greek and Roman worlds, written by the foremost expert on the subject, has been updated to incorporate the many new discoveries made in the field over the past decade. This revised volume includes discussions of several new or forgotten works by Galen and his contemporaries, as well as of new archaeological material. RNA analysis has expanded our understanding of disease in the ancient world; the book explores the consequences of this for sufferers, for example in creating disability. Nutton also expands upon the treatment of pre-Galenic medicine in Greece and Rome. In addition, subtitles and a chronology will make for easier student consultation, and the bibliography is substantially revised and updated, providing avenues for future student research. This third edition of Ancient Medicine will remain the definitive textbook on the subject for students of medicine in the classical world, and the history of medicine and science more broadly, with much to interest scholars in the field as well.




Medicine, Religion, and Health


Book Description

Medicine, Religion, and Health: Where Science and Spirituality Meet will be the first title published in the new Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this, the series' maiden volume, Dr. Harold G. Koenig, provides an overview of the relationship between health care and religion that manages to be comprehensive yet concise, factual yet inspirational, and technical yet easily accessible to nonspecialists and general readers. Focusing on the scientific basis for integrating spirituality into medicine, Koenig carefully summarizes major trends, controversies, and the latest research from various disciplines and provides plausible and compelling theoretical explanations for what has thus far emerged in this relatively young field of study. Medicine, Religion, and Health begins by defining the principal terms and then moves on to a brief history of religion's role in medicine before delving into the current state of research. Koenig devotes several chapters to exploring the outcomes of specific studies in fields such as mental health, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. The book concludes with a review of the clinical applications derived from the research. Koenig also supplies several detailed appendices to aid readers of all levels looking for further information. Medicine, Religion, and Health will shed new light on critical contemporary issues. They will whet readers' appetites for more information on this fascinating, complex, and controversial area of research, clinical activity, and widespread discussion. It will find a welcome home on the bookshelves of students, researchers, clinicians, and other health professionals in a variety of disciplines.




Medicine and Literature, Volume Two


Book Description

‘When I want to know the real rock-bottom truth about what happens all the time in this doctoring life, what happens to us, and to the folks who bring us their hearts and worries to be heard, that’s when I turn, every time, to the novelists, the playwrights, the poets, the essayists, who have given us the sights and sounds, the feel, of all that goes on, minute by minute. What Tolstoy and Chekhov knew, we need to know for ourselves, for our own sakes, as we live out our medical lives.’ William Carlos Williams ‘The most fundamental of all consulting skills is genuine curiosity about other people, the constant urge to wonder ‘Why are they as they are?’ We should open our minds to the life of the imagination not just for its entertainment value, but for the mindset of curiosity it engenders in us. Such books as John Salinsky describes in this and his previous volume combine powerful opportunities for our own professional growth with pleasure and recreation too.’ Roger Neighbour in his Foreword ‘This carefully assembled, wonderfully telling book is a “companion,” for sure, a lasting and most helpful one, for the medical travelling that awaits us.’ Robert Coles in his Foreword.




A Short History of Medicine


Book Description

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 highlighting physicians and scientists from Hippocrates and Galen to Pasteur, Koch, and Roentgen, Ackerknecht narrates Western and Eastern civilization’s work at identifying and curing disease. He follows these discoveries from the library to the bedside, hospital, and laboratory, illuminating how basic biological sciences interacted with clinical practice over time. But his story is more than one of laudable scientific and therapeutic achievement. Ackerknecht also points toward the social, ecological, economic, and political conditions that shape the incidence of disease. Improvements in health, Ackerknecht argues, depend on more than laboratory knowledge: they also require that we improve the lives of ordinary men and women by altering social conditions such as poverty and hunger. This revised and expanded edition includes a new foreword and concluding biographical essay by Charles E. Rosenberg, Ackerknecht’s former student and a distinguished historian of medicine. A new bibliographic essay by Lisa Haushofer explores recent scholarship in the history of medicine.




Science and Technology in Medicine


Book Description

The history and evolution of the fields of science and medicine are symbiotically linked and thus are mutually dependent. Discoveries in one domain have allowed for progress in the other, and it is nearly impossible to study one area in isolation. The influence of science and technologic discoveries on medicine has profoundly impacted the way physicians practice and has resulted in an extended life expectancy and quality of life that our ancestors never dreamed possible. Science and Technology in Medicine is a collection of 99 essays based on landmark publications that have appeared in the medical literature over the past 500 years. Each essay includes a summary of the article or chapter; text and images reproduced directly from the original source; a short biography of the author(s); and a discussion about the significance of the discovery and its subsequent influence on later developments. Original material by the likes of Dürer, Bernoulli, Doppler, Pasteur, Trendelenburg, Curie and Röntgen offers readers a rare glimpse at publications housed in archives around the world, beautifully reproduced in one fascinating volume.




Why We Get Sick


Book Description

The next time you get sick, consider this before picking up the aspirin: your body may be doing exactly what it's supposed to. In this ground-breaking book, two pioneers of the science of Darwinian medicine argue that illness as well as the factors that predispose us toward it are subject to the same laws of natural selection that otherwise make our bodies such miracles of design. Among the concerns they raise: When may a fever be beneficial? Why do pregnant women get morning sickness? How do certain viruses "manipulate" their hosts into infecting others? What evolutionary factors may be responsible for depression and panic disorder? Deftly summarizing research on disorders ranging from allergies to Alzheimer's, and form cancer to Huntington's chorea, Why We Get Sick, answers these questions and more. The result is a book that will revolutionize our attitudes toward illness and will intrigue and instruct lay person and medical practitioners alike.




Sympathy and Science


Book Description

When first published in 1985, Sympathy and Science was hailed as a groundbreaking study of women in medicine. It remains the most comprehensive history of American women physicians available. Tracing the participation of women in the medical profession from the colonial period to the present, Regina Morantz-Sanchez examines women's roles as nurses, midwives, and practitioners of folk medicine in early America; recounts their successful struggles in the nineteenth century to enter medical schools and found their own institutions and organizations; and follows female physicians into the twentieth century, exploring their efforts to sustain significant and rewarding professional lives without sacrificing the other privileges and opportunities of womanhood. In a new preface, the author surveys recent scholarship and comments on the changing world of women in medicine over the past two decades. Despite extraordinary advances, she concludes, women physicians continue to grapple with many of the issues that troubled their predecessors.