Field of medicine: History of medicine.

Format: Hardcover book.

Audience: Educated laypersons and interested physicians.

Purpose: To present a survey of western medicine.

Content: Edited by the distinguished English historian Roy Porter, this is a lavishly presented and clearly narrated account of the major transformations that mark the rise and course of western scientific medicine. It covers a wide range of subjects, including the history of modern diseases, medical pioneers, and therapeutic discoveries.

Highlights: The opening chapters on the history of disease and the rise of medicine devote substantial attention to the ancient period; subsequent chapters are more thematic in approach, addressing such issues as the rise of the hospital and its links to surgery, mental illness, and health care policy. Although frequent references are made to developments in the United States and continental Europe, English events are (not surprisingly) at the heart of these pages. The pictorial accompaniments to the text are superb.

Limitations: The introduction promises that this history of medicine will not be a standard celebration of medical progress and how medical technology has pushed back the frontiers of death, but the book is just that. Most of the chapters are devoted to stories of conquest, with little on the root causes of contemporary discomfort with the profession. Moreover, the thematic quality of the chapters, many of them tracing their subject matter from pre-modern to contemporary times, leaves readers without a secure sense of links among the parts or a firm grasp on an overall chronology.

Context: Limitations notwithstanding, there is a mine of information here, all of it accessible to the reader. The book is more up-to-date than E.H. Ackerknecht's classic Short History of Medicine (Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1982), the classic Civilization and Disease by Henry Sigerist (Univ of Chicago Pr, 1943), and The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine, by Oscar Temkin (Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1977). It also covers material not included in the essays that make up The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 (Cambridge Univ Pr, 1995). In sum, a physician or patient who wants a responsible, handsome survey of the field will be pleased with this book.

Reviewer: David J. Rothman, PhD, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York.