Guenter B. Risse

Guenter B. Risse (1932-) is a historian of science and medicine. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to German immigrants, he received his M.D. degree from the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine before coming to the United States to complete and internship and training in internal medicine. After obtaining his American citizenship, he obtained a Ph.D. degree in history at the University of Chicago in 1971. Since then he has held academic appointments at the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of California and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington in Seattle. The American Association for the History of Medicine awarded him the 1988 Willian H. Welch Medal for his book Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland and in 2005 its Lifetime Achievement Award. His most popular work Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals narrates the transformation of Western hospitals from houses of mercy to institutions of science and technology. Such a "master narrative" rests on a dozen episodes featuring patients admitted to prominent hospitals, their suffering and adaptation to institutional life and its often cumbersome routines. The book's final chapter features the AIDS Ward at San Francisco General Hospital during the early 1980s, an unforgettable and very emotional experience for a writer who visited and spoke with the patients. The most recent book, Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown sketches the drama of a lethal epidemic with the help of contemporary Chinese voices reflected in their daily newspaper. Rampant racism, political intrigue and commercial interests guided the contours of this epidemic, creating a reflection of contemporary American life.