History of Medicine at the WVU Health Sciences Library: Books

Since it was first published in 1955, A Short History of Medicine has been hailed as the best available book of its kind: a concise and readable introduction to the history of medicine, written for students and professionals alike. This new, revised edition of Erwin H. Ackerknecht's classic volume is now available in paperback, making the book especially suitable for classroom use. Description from Doody's Review Service

The influence of Greek medical practices dating back to the fifth century B.C. has had an immeasurable impact on the development of medicine in the West over the subsequent centuries. This text is designed to cover the history of Western medicine from Classical Antiquity to 1800. As one guiding thread it takes the system of medical ideas that, in large part, went back to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C., and played a major role in the understanding and treatment of health and disease. The influence of Greek medicine spread from the Aegean basin to the rest of the Mediterranean region, to Europe, and then to European settlements overseas. By the nineteenth century, however, this tradition no longer carried the same force or occupied so central a position within medicine. This book charts the influence of this tradition through twenty centuries, examining it in its social and historical context. It is essential reading as a new synthesis for all students of the history of medicine. Description from Doody's Review Service.

Roy Porter, a social historian of medicine the London's Wellcome Institute, has written an dauntingly thick history of how medical thinking and practice has risen to the challenges of disease through the centuries. But delve into its pages, and you'll find one marvelous bit of history after another. The obvious highlights are touched upon--Hippocrates introduces his oath, Pasteur homogenizes, Jonas Salk produces the polio vaccine, and so on--but there's also Dr. Francis Willis's curing of The Madness of King George, W. T. G. Morton's hucksterish use of ether in surgery, and research on digestion conducted using a man with a stomach fistula (if you don't know what that means, you may not want to know). Porter is straightforward about his deliberate focus on Western medical traditions, citing their predominant influence on global medicine, and with The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, he has produced a volume worthy of that tradition's legacy. Description from Doody's Review Service.