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Post by jamierobertson on Jul 21, 2009 12:44:15 GMT
Hello chaps,
Can James (or anyone else) suggest any good books to read on the history of medical science, specifically? Just started developing a wee interest in the topic lately, but I'd like to have a read at something a bit more reputable than Wikipedia...
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Post by James Hannam on Jul 21, 2009 20:51:45 GMT
Jamie,
The best book on this by far is David Wooton's Bad Medicine. It's a materpiece as you can tell from all the ire it has caused among historians of medicine.
I'd read that (it's short and fun) and then decide how much more on the subject you want to read.
Best wishes
James
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Post by bjorn on Jul 29, 2009 21:29:48 GMT
Two others that are enlightening:
"The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire" by Timothy S. Miller
and "Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds" by Darrel W. Amundsen who bothers to look at some of the myths regarding the interaction of medicine and the Christian faith, institutions, and ethics - especially all this stuff about medieval clergy being forbidden to practise medicine and surgery.
On another note, one could also find some interesting stuff in "A Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine: The Sources, Compilation, and Transmission of the Hippiatrica", by Anne McCabe.
Still, the paradigm throughout is of course all Galen.
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Post by jamierobertson on Jul 29, 2009 21:32:41 GMT
Yeah, I never quite got why it took someone as radical as Vesalius to get Galen off his podium...
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