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(7 reviews)
Author: Ira Rutkow
ISBN : 1416538283
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Format: PDF
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From Publishers Weekly
Surgeon and historian Rutkow (
Bleeding Blue and Gray) takes on an ambitious survey of the events of medicine within the full tapestry of the American experience. It's a daunting piece of terrain, and Rutkow traverses it with ease through the stories of an array of fabulous physicians. Among them is William Morton, the self-taught dentist who in 1846 demonstrated ether's effectiveness in relieving the pain of surgery. Also present are William Welch, the dean of American medicine, who emphasized the novel idea of the importance of laboratory research to medicine. Abraham Flexner was a muckraker about the failings of medical training in the vein of his contemporary, Upton Sinclair.By the mid-20th century, Rutkow writes, Science had finally vanquished the bugbears of superstition and tradition. Physicians turned a once-suspect profession into a respected one. America, as well, had achieved prestige as a place where new treatments were found. The trends in the late 20th century are just as exhilarating, Rutkow finds, albeit far more complex and troubling: Modern medicine has become an arena of trade-offs, a balance between costs, organization, expectations, and ethics.Rutkow reminds us just how satisfying history can be in the hands of a good storyteller.
(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Applying a historian’s eye to the progression of American medicine, surgeon Rutkow assembles a reader-friendly account of the leaps, bounds, fits, and starts that characterize the profession’s development. Beginning in pre-revolutionary times, when the epithet doctor could mean anyone who wished to so call himself, and commencing to the current behemoth, a medical-industrial complex that Rutkow refers to as a “hydra,” the book is largely anecdotal. Chapters are subdivided into sections, and numerous parallels are drawn to other national historical events. It’s easy to see that the young nation’s expansion frequently dictated the direction of clinical practices, on the intrepid trek westward, for example, or following the introduction and popularity of the railroad. Alternately, Rutkow demonstrates how the development of the medical profession, such as its organization by the American Medical Association, physician specialization, and biotechnology, has influenced the nation’s sociopolitical course. So doing, he synthesizes a daunting amount of information otherwise available in a number of other books (mostly biographies) into one cohesive, decidedly comprehensible unit. --Donna Chavez
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Direct download links available for Free Download Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America Hardcover
- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; 1 edition (April 13, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416538283
- ISBN-13: 978-1416538288
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
Free Download Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America
I was rereading a wonderful old novel by H. G. Wells, "The History of Mr. Polly." Mr. Polly's father dies, and Wells says: "...the local practitioner still clung to his theory that it was imagination he suffered from, but compromised in the certificate with the appendicitis that was then so fashionable." Why was appendicitis "fashionable?"
If someone asked you to fill in the blank quickly in the sentence "The surgeon performed an _________" you would probably say "appendectomy." Yet it isn't such a terribly common operation today. Why is it the ur-operation, the one always used for purposes of hypothetical illustration. Why appendectomies?
I saw "Seeking the Cure" and dipped into it to see whether it had an answer. It did, or at least as close to an answer as you'd ever get. It was a confluence of events. I hadn't realized that abdominal surgery had once been a medical taboo, with a nearly 100% mortality rate. Antisepsis ("Listerism") and anesthesia made it safe. It had once been extremely difficult to diagnose. I hadn't really thought of centrifuges, microscopes and blood counts as being a breakthrough in modern technology, but of course they were, part of the medical technology revolution that emerged from World War I. And they made it possible to diagnose appendicitis reliably. And there was one influential surgeon who promoted the idea that it was a surgeon's disease, that appendicitis "belonged to" the surgeon. Hospitals and surgeons found appendectomies to be lucrative, and they became almost a fad; Rutkow cites a hospital in which 1/5th of all operations performed were appendectomies.
Well, I was hooked. The book fascinated me.
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