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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Excellent. Apr 15, 2009
As a soon-to-be medical student, I am very glad I read this book and would highly recommend it to anyone going into the field. It was thought-provoking through and through and fairly easy to read even though it dealt with weighty topics. Since I came from a non-medicine related undergraduate major, I had to keep wikipedia close-by to look up terms and indulge curiosities as I read, and I ended up learning a lot that way, so I recommend others do similarly.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
The Return of Humanism in Medicine: Hope for the Future Jan 22, 2009
In this litigious time when physicians and all medical care workers tend to live under an umbrella of suspect brought on by the intervention of the media, vast lawsuits, big business (pharmaceutical companies) intervention, and computer access to data, there has occurred a response in the medical facilities to promote 'defensive medicine' to instruct the nascent students how to cope with the antagonistic world outside the halls of the teaching hospitals. This has resulted in less emphasis on the learning of the skills of the time honored Doctor-Patient relationship and in creating the aura that physicians dwell in glass dome sanctuaries of science: the quiet moments of sharing personal fears and concerns and relieving the pain in the souls of the patient and patients' families seem relics of the past house-call/caring-physician image.
Michael Kennedy in his book A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISEASE, SCIENCE & MEDICINE has done more to rectify this widening gap between physician and patient than any volume I have read. This meticulously written, dignified yet very warm and honest look at medicine from the Ice Age to the era of molecular and genetic concepts for the present and the future reads more like a fascinating novel than an academic treatise. There are facts and histories discussed here which will enlighten not only the general public but also the men and women of medicine - from premed student to retired doctor. It is simply an amazing source of knowledge while simultaneously being an honest, no-holds-barred review of how we came to this point in healthcare. And if ever there were a time when this book was needed, it is certainly now. Read this fascinating tome and learn not only the extraordinary progress made in the mystery of disease and physical meanderings away from the 'normal', but at the same time see just how vulnerable is the scientist and physician in dealing with new aspects of the art of practicing medicine through time.
Kennedy and his colleagues have added an important adjunct to the re-entry of humanism in the teaching of medicine at his alma mater: this book demonstrates that journey of commitment to resurrect the precious healing relationship between the doctor and those who approach him for succor. Read this book for a highly dignified history of medicine, for some amazing insights into disease process, and for reassurance the perhaps the return of the sanctity of healthcare delivery is a possibility. A fine and very important achievement, Dr. Kennedy! Grady Harp, January 09
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Splendid piece of work, authoritative and readable Jan 22, 2009
Brief this is not, but compared to some dry academic tomes it seems brief. University of Southern California professor Dr. Michael T. Kennedy has the all too rare gift of writing well which he combines with a passion for detail so that this history is packed with the bizarre, the fascinating, the arcane, and the all too often revolting facts of medical delusion, malpractice, and triumph that have characterized the long and tortured history of the healing arts.
Note well that this is a history not only of medicine and disease, but of science as well. The emphasis is on twentieth century developments, which is as it should be since so much has happened in recent times. This is not to say that the more distant past is neglected. Kennedy starts with the pre-history and follows the quest for health through Greek and Roman times to "The Rise of Islam and Arabic Medicine" (Chapter 5) with excursions into ayurvedic medicine (from India) and the traditional Chinese practices from antiquity. He even looks at European health, or the lack thereof, during the Dark and Middle Ages before the rise of science. When he gets to the modern or nearly modern era, Kennedy organizes less by chronology and more by subject matter. Some of the later chapters are about "Cardiac Surgery," "Transplantation," "Psychiatry," etc. I particularly liked the crisp way he dealt with psychoanalytic theory and the inefficacy of psychoanalysis.
Frankly, I don't know if there is anything else quite like this available. The recognized authority on the subject of the history of medicine in English, University College London's late Roy Porter wrote both a popular account, Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine (2002), and a full blown treatment, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997) which Kennedy cites. I have read the former and it is to Kennedy's book as Mary Poppins is to Hamlet. There are other histories, but most are either not current or too voluminous or too restricted in content.
Dr. Kennedy shows how various ideas and methods were developed, how they stemmed from, or were in contrast to, earlier methods; and he highlights the personalities of the practitioners as he describes what they did or discovered. He also focuses on patients and their stories. His style is sharp and uncluttered. Sometimes he employs a dry, cynical wit. At other times his report takes on extra-medical aspects that lend depth and familiarity to his portraits, as when, for example, he reports on the tragic death of transplant pioneer, Dr. David Hume. (p. 388)
Here are some examples of the kind of detail that I found fascinating:
"The early Middle Ages saw little consumption of animal protein by the peasants, but legume production, which increased with the agricultural revolution, reduced the dependence on carbohydrates and led to rapid population growth again." (p. 69)
And on the following page: "Women lived shorter lives than men in the Middle Ages...This is attributed to the hazards of childbirth, but also to an iron deficient diet...[because] animal protein was not available."
"...[A]lthough opium offered some relief of pain...until the anesthesia era, speed was the sign of the good surgeon." (p. 85)
"Infectious diseases were uncommon in primitive societies because the available pool of susceptible individuals was too small and the contact with other groups was not common." (p. 87) Indeed, infectious disease is part of the price we pay for agriculture and civilization.
Quoting Freud: "I often console myself with the idea that, even though we achieve so little therapeutically, at least we understand why more cannot be achieved." (p. 401) This is doubly ironic since Freud was even deceived in what he thought he understood. A few pages later Kennedy drily remarks that psychotherapy "is useful in helping adults to deal with life stress. It has little or no role in treating psychosis. The serious mental illnesses are increasingly seen as biological disorders." (p. 424)
The only weakness of this book is that it could have used a more meticulous editor. (The proofreading is excellent.) Kennedy's writing style is fast-forward, actually suggesting to me how medical history might be written had somebody like, say, novelist James M. Cain taken his hand to it. The words just rush down the page. Kennedy has so much to say and he wants to get it all said. Sometimes one has to read a sentence twice since sometimes his tenses are a little eccentric, and parallel construction is not always strictly observed.
There are two indices, one for names, but I notice that the aforementioned Roy Porter, for example, does not appear in either of them. Probably the names in the footnotes were left out. Also the references (545 of them) are collected at the end of each chapter, which is fine, but there is no overall alphabetized bibliography. This is a pet peeve of mine since one has to chase through chapter after chapter to see if a particular work is cited.
However Kennedy more than makes up for this deficiency with what he calls a "Postscript" which is a lightly annotated bibliography organized into the categories, "Recommended Reading," "General Sources," and sources by individual chapters.
Bottom line: the best history of medicine that I have found and a delight to read.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
I'm the auther Jan 21, 2009
This is the paperback edition of the hard cover book that has been available since 2004. It is a trade paperback and exactly the same size and content as the hardcover edition. The book has been adopted by a number of colleges as a textbook in general biology courses and even in some high school AP summer programs. This change to the paperback edition will keep it available indefinitely and the sales of the hardcover edition were still going pretty well. I decided not to do a third printing as I was unsure of the continued level of interest. This is the same book. The second printing had correction of a few typesetting errors in the first but this version is exactly the same as the second printing.
0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
no problems! Aug 12, 2008
The book arrived it great shape without any damage. Book was brand new just as stated in the description. Also, the book arrived in the amount of time that was stated.
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