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Title: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity by Roy Porter ISBN: 0-393-31980-6 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.08 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A landmark for historical writing
Comment: This book delievers what it was written to deliever. It wasn't meant to be a brain candy, witty, clever, majestic, novel that makes the common person rush out to apply to medical school. It is going to seem "boring" if you don't want to LEARN about THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE. An excellent book preceding this to read would be "Guns, Germs, and Steel," by Jared Diamond to put things in a solid historical reality. This book is five stars, but be ready to engage yourself with the text, buy a highlighter if it helps you concentrate, go back to college, pretend you need to get an A in the History of Western Medicine, because you will have an A+ perspective on medicine if you keep the correct perspective regarding this book.
Rating: 4
Summary: More a European History
Comment: This is the second review of three I have done of socio-medical histories written of edited by Roy Porter (you can read the others on my reivew page). I read and compared this to The "Cambridge Illustrated History: Medicine", and "Gout, the Patrician Maladay". I thought this was the best approach as people might be like me, looking for a reference work to buy and trying to toss up between which one to get and what the advantages and disadvantages of one over another.
In terms of content I think this is the more comprehensive of the two general reference works. It is over twice the length of Cambridge (over 800 pages in this one compared to not quite 400). It also doesn't have pages taken up with illustrations as Cambridge does. That is probably the thing I like least about this book, there are only three small sections in the middle with some black and white pictures reproduced - I think on comparison I do prefer the slightly more expensive version of having pictures on the pages I am reading for this kind of reference work.
The book is divided into 22 chapters which follow the rise of Western medicine more or less chronologically. There are also chapters included on Chinese and Indian Medicine, but expect the emphasis to be European in both history and development. Each chapter is divided into specific topics which are discussed a structure I quite enjoyed as it broke up the text and made it more readable.
I looked up some specific subjects to compare this with the Cambrige work and in each case (among them Purperal fever, Galen, Resurrectionists) this book had far more detailed and comprehensive explanations, often citing broad statistics. However writing the a social and medical history of mankind is difficult to do full justice even in 800-some pages. It does give a slightly provide more detail but I wasn't really sure that the slightly greater detail was that much of an advantage to make up for the loss of illustration. In the end this is still only slightly more detail on broad trends rather than in-depth discussion. He does cover some people and subjects not dealt with in "Cambridge" including people like Dr James Barry, the first female surgeon (although she was masquerading as a man at the time) - but of course the space available doesn't allow Porter to discuss any of her other significant work as, in terms of forwarding the field of medicine, she was not earth-shattering.
Porter has a very good-natured and readable style of writing though and I really enjoyed it. He breaks this chapters up into short sections and interspeses them with rather nice jokes for instance on page 129 he writes of 'Trotula'said to be a female of 12th century medical school in Salerno but says " 'Dame Trot' was more likely a male writing in drag."
So while I very much enjoyed the book and would certainly have no qualms in recommending it to read at all, I do hold some reservations about it - but strictly in comparison with what else is available.
Rating: 2
Summary: more a reference than a good read
Comment: this book is not easy to read. it reads like an encyclopedia, and a bad one at that. i could only bear a few hundred pages of it before i felt that i was wasting my time. only for the serious medical history student.
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Title: Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul by Roy Porter, Simon Schama ISBN: 0393050750 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Clinical Gross Anatomy: A Guide for Dissection Study and Review by Gene L. Colborn, John E. Skandalakis ISBN: 1850705224 Publisher: CRC Press-Parthenon Publishers Pub. Date: 15 December, 1993 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
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Title: Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine by Roy Porter ISBN: 0393037622 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Human Embryology & Developmental Biology by Bruce M. Carlson ISBN: 0815114583 Publisher: Mosby Pub. Date: 15 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $49.00 |
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Title: Imaging Atlas of Human Anatomy by Jamie Weir, Peter H. Abrahams ISBN: 0723432112 Publisher: Mosby Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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