Medicine, Health and Society


Book Description

Sharp, bold and engaging, this book provides a contemporary account of why medical sociology matters in our modern society. Combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, and applying the pragmatic demands of policy, this timely book explores society′s response to key issues such as race, gender and identity to explain the relationship between sociology, medicine and medical sociology. Each chapter includes an authoritative introduction to pertinent areas of debate, a clear summary of key issues and themes and dedicated bibliography. Chapters include: • social theory and medical sociology • health inequalities • bodies, pain and suffering • personal, local and global. Brimming with fresh interpretations and critical insights this book will contribute to illuminating the practical realities of medical sociology. This exciting text will be of interest to students of sociology of health and illness, medical sociology, and sociology of the body. Hannah Bradby has a visiting fellowship at the Department of Primary Care and Health Sciences, King′s College London. She is monograph series editor for the journal Sociology of Health and Illness and co-edits the multi-disciplinary journal Ethnicity and Health.




Health, Medicine and Society


Book Description

Taking as its point of departure recent developments in health and social theory Health, Medicine and Society brings together a range of eminent, international scholars to reflect upon key issues at the turn of the century. Contributors draw upon a range of contemporary theories, both modernist and postmodernist, to look at the following themes: *health and social structure *the contested nature of the body *the salience of consumption and risk *the challenge of emotions Health, Medicine and Society provides a 'state-of-the-art' assessment of health related issues at the millennium and a cogent set of arguments for the centrality of health to contemporary social theory. Written in a clear, accessible style it will be ideal reading for students and researchers in health studies, public health, medical sociology, medicine and nursing.




Readings in Health, Medicine, and Society


Book Description

Readings in Health, Medicine, and Society offers students carefully selected readings that provide them with a broad and well-rooted knowledge base in global and U.S. medical sociology. Unit I provides students with an overview of the field and examines select concepts and theoretical perspectives. Unit II illustrates the ways in which culture impacts health and health care systems. Unit III examines inequalities at the individual and societal levels. In Unit IV, students investigate how political and corporate structures impact people's health choices and behaviors. Unit V describes the key variables involved in the socialization of Western doctors, reviews the ways folk medicines differ from the Western paradigm, and illustrates an example of healing practices outside Western medicine. Unit VI provides a review of emerging medical technologies as they relate to sociology and offers a critical analysis of pharmaceutical technology. Unit VII critically examines the history of power building by U.S. doctors. The final unit offers a brief overview of the history of bioethics through a discussion of the Nuremburg Code, followed by an examination of patient autonomy and informed consent. Featuring a unique sociological perspective, Readings in Health, Medicine, and Society is an ideal resource for courses in medical sociology and public health.




Medicine, Health and Society


Book Description

Sharp, bold and engaging, this book provides a contemporary account of why medical sociology matters in our modern society. Combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, and applying the pragmatic demands of policy, this timely book explores society′s response to key issues such as race, gender and identity to explain the relationship between sociology, medicine and medical sociology. Each chapter includes an authoritative introduction to pertinent areas of debate, a clear summary of key issues and themes and dedicated bibliography. Chapters include: • social theory and medical sociology • health inequalities • bodies, pain and suffering • personal, local and global. Brimming with fresh interpretations and critical insights this book will contribute to illuminating the practical realities of medical sociology. This exciting text will be of interest to students of sociology of health and illness, medical sociology, and sociology of the body. Hannah Bradby has a visiting fellowship at the Department of Primary Care and Health Sciences, King′s College London. She is monograph series editor for the journal Sociology of Health and Illness and co-edits the multi-disciplinary journal Ethnicity and Health.




Medicine, Health and Being Human


Book Description

This book explores how the medical has defined us: that is, the ways in which perspectives of medicine and health have affected understandings of what it means to be human. With chapters that span from the early modern period to the contemporary world, and are drawn from a range of disciplines and around the world, it holds that historical and cultural influences have brought about an understanding of humanity in which the medical is ingrained, sometimes unconsciously, usually as a mode of legitimisation. This volume is a valuable contribution for those interested in the medical humanities, history of medicine, history of ideas and the social approaches to health and illness.




Health, Behaviour and Society: Clinical Medicine in Context


Book Description

There is more to a person than a particular symptom or disease: patients are individuals but they are not isolated, they are part of a family, a community, an environment, and all these factors can affect in many different ways how they manage health and illness. This book provides an introduction to population, sociological and psychological influences on health and delivery of healthcare in the UK and will equip today’s medical students with the knowledge required to be properly prepared for clinical practice in accordance with the outcomes of Tomorrow’s Doctors.




Health, Medicine, and Society in Victorian England


Book Description

This work offers a social and cultural history of Victorian medicine "from below," as experienced by ordinary practitioners and patients, often described in their own words. Health, Medicine, and Society in Victorian England is a human story of medicine in 19th-century England. It's a story of how a diverse and competitive assortment of apothecary apprentices, surgeons who learned their trade by doing, and physicians schooled in ancient Greek medicine but lacking in any actual experience with patients, was gradually formed into a medical profession with uniform standards of education and qualification. It's a story of how medical men struggled with "new" diseases such as cholera and "old" ones known for centuries, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox, largely in the absence of effective drugs or treatments, and so were often reduced to standing helplessly by as their patients died. It's a story of how surgeons, empowered first by anesthesia and later by antiseptic technique, vastly expanded the field of surgery—sometimes with major benefits for patients, but sometimes with disastrous results. Above all, it's a story of how gender and class ideology dominated both practitioners and patients. Women were stridently excluded from medical education and practice of any kind until the end of the century, but were hailed into the new field of nursing, which was felt to be "natural" to the gentler sex. Only the poor were admitted to hospitals until the last decades of the century, and while they often received compassionate care, they were also treated as "cases" of disease and experimented upon with freedom. Yet because medical knowledge was growing by leaps and bounds, Victorians were fascinated with this new field and wrote novels, poetry, essays, letters, and diaries, which illuminate their experience of health and disease for us. Newly developed techniques of photography, as well as improved print illustrations, help us to picture this fascinating world. This vivid history of Victorian medicine is enriched with many literary examples and visual images drawn from the period.




Emerging Illnesses and Society


Book Description

"Presenting a theoretical model of the social process of "emerging" illness, the volume's introductory chapter identifies critical factors that shape different trajectories toward the construction of public health priorities. Through case studies of individual diseases and analyses of public awareness campaigns and institutional responses, later chapters provide important insights into the reasons why some illnesses receive more attention and funding than others."--Jacket.




Medicine in Society


Book Description

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.




Medicine, Health and the Arts


Book Description

In recent decades, both medical humanities and medical history have emerged as rich and varied sub-disciplines. Medicine, Health and the Arts is a collection of specially commissioned essays designed to bring together different approaches to these complex fields. Written by a selection of established and emerging scholars, this volume embraces a breadth and range of methodological approaches to highlight not only developments in well-established areas of debate, but also newly emerging areas of investigation, new methodological approaches to the medical humanities and the value of the humanities in medical education. Divided into five sections, this text begins by offering an overview and analysis of the British and North American context. It then addresses in-depth the historical and contemporary relationship between visual art, literature and writing, performance and music. There are three chapters on each art form, which consider how history can illuminate current challenges and potential future directions. Each section contains an introductory overview, addressing broad themes and methodological concerns; a case study of the impact of medicine, health and well-being on an art form; and a case study of the impact of that art form on medicine, health and wellbeing. The underlining theme of the book is that the relationship between medicine, health and the arts can only be understood by examining the reciprocal relationship and processes of exchange between them. This volume promises to be a welcome and refreshing addition to the developing field of medical humanities. Both informative and thought provoking, it will be important reading for students, academics and practitioners in the medical humanities and arts in health, as well as health professionals, and all scholars and practitioners interested in the questions and debates surrounding medicine, health and the arts.