The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present

by RoyPorter (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $4.25

  Medicine advances ever faster, and with it not just a capacity to overcome sickness, but to transform the very nature of life. Starting in ancient antiquity, this text charts how this health revolution came about and how life for human beings in the West has ceased, in Hobbes' memorable phrase, to be nasty, brutish and short. Porter plots the growth of medical specialisms - pharmacology, physiology, anatomy, neurology, bacteriology - and the institutions of medicine - the hospital and asylum - to show how medical advances have often created as many problems as they have solved. The book also shows how the ancient Egyptians treated incipient baldness with a mixture of hippopotamus, lion, crocodile, goose, snake and ibex fat; how a mystery epidemic devastated ancient Athens and brought to an end the domination of that great city; and how lemons did as much as Nelson to defeat Napolean.

• New

  Paperback
  1999

  $41.42

  Hailed as a remarkable achievement (Boston Sunday Globe) and as a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking . . . a splendid and thoroughly engrossing book (Los Angeles Times), Roy Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords us an opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to mankind. Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, covering ground from the diseases of the hunter-gatherers to today's threat of AIDS and ebola, from the clearly defined conviction of the Hippocratic oath to the muddy ethical dilemmas of modern-day medicine. Offering up a treasure trove of historical surprises along the way, this book has instantly become the standard single-volume work in its field (The Lancet). The author's perceptiveness is, as usual, scalpel-sharp; his manner genially bedside; his erudition invigorating. - Simon Schama