Patients and Practitioners by Roy Porter

Patients and Practitioners by Roy Porter

The essays in this volume provide an unusual historical perspective on the experience of illness: they try to reconstruct what being ill (from a minor ailment to fatal sickness) was like in pre-industrial society from the point of view of the sufferers themselves. The authors examine the meanings that were attached to sickness; popular medical beliefs and practices; the diffusion of popular medical knowledge; and the relations between patients and their doctors (both professional and 'fringe') seen from the patients' point of view. This is an important work, for illness and death dominated life in earlier societies to an enormous degree. Yet almost no studies of this kind have ever been carried out before, practically all previous treatments having been written from the traditional point of view of the doctor, the hospital, or medical science. It will accordingly interest a wide range of readers interested in social history as well as the history of medicine itself.

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	9780521530613
ISBN 10	052153061X
Title	Patients and Practitioners
Author	Roy Porter
Series	Cambridge Studies In The History Of Medicine
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2003-02-13
Number of pages	364
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.