Explaining Epidemics - Hardcover

Rosenberg, Charles E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 052139340X ISBN 13: 9780521393409

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Medicine has always had its historians; but until recently it was a history written by and for practitioners. Charles Rosenberg has been one of the key figures in recent decades in opening up the history of medicine beyond parochial concerns and instead viewing medicine in the rich currents of intellectual and social change of the past two centuries. This book brings together for the first time in one place many of Professor Rosenberg's most important essays. The first two sections of essays, focusing on ideas and institutions, are meant at the same time to underline interactions between these realms. The essays treat such topics as therapeutics and its relationship to social change in the nineteenth century; the practice of medicine in New York a century ago; and the rise and fall of the dispensary. The third section of the book focuses on the attempt to use history as a resource for discussion of a medical world that often seems out of control and in a semi-permanent crisis, economic, organizational, and humane. The essays discuss themes that have become visible to the public – deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the status of psychiatry; the hospital as a social and economic problem; and the social negotiations surrounding AIDS.

About this title

Review

'The distinguished author of this collection of scholarly essays, the President of the American Association for the History of Medicine, brings the history of medicine out of the parochial concerns of practitioners of the discipline, viewing it within 'the rich context of the intellectual and social change of the last two centuries ... Intellectually stimulating.' Journal of the Institute of Health Education

Book Description

Medicine until recently remained a history written by and for practitioners. These essays diverge from this tradition in an attempt to view medical history within the context of intellectual and social change of the last two centuries.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 052139340X
• ISBN 13: 9780521393409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368