THE STORY OF MEDICINE

by Kenneth Walker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 1955

A British surgeon has charted ""the haphazard way in which medicine advances"" through the centuries with clarity and composure, and this history of the healing art follows the course of mankind and the malignancies which have afflicted it in terms of the men who were to conquer and cure. And so, from prehistoric times and the evidence of the infirmities of humanity in the earliest cave drawings, medicine marches on to the Greeks who were to free it from superstition and create an empirical art, and down through the Middle Ages scourged by plague, the Renaissance, the brilliant 17th century, and finally the 19th which saw the start of specialization. In the second half there is a survey of particular phases rather than eras, of surgery, anesthesia and antisepsis, infective- deficiency and mental diseases, the new realm of public health, the old mis-rule of quackery. Simultaneously, there is the cavalcade of great men and their contributions in the identification and alleviation of disease through the ages... A particularly handsome book, there are some fifty half tone pictures and line cuts, this is an excellent survey for the general reader.

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1955

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1955

Categories: NONFICTION