Madness by Roy Porter

Madness by Roy Porter

This story of madness reveals the radically different perceptions of madness and approaches to its treatment, from antiquity to the beginning of the 21st century. Roy Porter explores what we really mean by "madness", covering an enormous range of topics from witches to creative geniuses, electric shock therapy to sexual deviancy, and psychoanalysis to Prozac. The origins of debates about how we define and deal with insanity are examined through eyewitness accounts of those treating patients, writers, artists, and the mad themselves.

Roy Porter's untimely death deprived us of one of the outstanding scholars of his generationThis short book on how mental illness has been defined and treated through the ages is brilliantly done. It's concise but not reductive; readable but not dumbed down. Porter wears his vast interdisciplinary learning lightly, and has the knack of combining elegantly clear summary with vivid and intriguing detail - from witchcraft to Freud; from Bedlam to psychopharmacology and beyond. And Porter is also highly informative whilst whetting the reader's appetite for more. In this way the book functions as an ideal (and handsomely produced) introduction to its subject; and as a compelling gateway onto its author's more than 80 other books.

Roy Porter zahlt zu den renommiertesten Medizinhistorikern der Welt. Er war Professor fur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin am Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London und hat zahlreiche Bucher zu medizin- und sozialgeschichtlichen Themen verfasst und herausgegeben. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte waren die Medizin des 18. Jahrhunderts, die Geschichte der Psychiatrie und die Geschichte der Quacksalberei. Dietrich von Engelhardt charakterisiert ihn in seinem Geleitwort zum vorliegenden Buch so: >>Porter, produktiv und vital im Gesprach, im Vortrag wie im literarischen Schaffen, ist ein profunder und geistreicher Kenner der historischen Entwicklung der Medizin und gehort zu jenen Medizinhistorikern der Gegenwart, die stets die immanenten Dimensionen der Medizin mit den sozialkulturellen Hintergrunden in Verbindung bringen.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780192802668
ISBN 10	0192802666
Title	Madness
Author	Roy Porter
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2002-05-01
Number of pages	253
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable