Book Description

What forces lead to changes in governance among medical schools and their associated teaching hospitals? To what extent do such changes affect how well those schools and hospitals do their work? In this book, John A. Kastor, M.D., focuses on the academic medical centers of the University of Pennsylvania and the Johns Hopkins University, two institutions that underwent dramatic change in governance during the late 1990s.

Drawing on extensive interviews with more than three hundred administrators, physicians, and other medical professionals at Penn, Hopkins, and elsewhere, Kastor identifies the factors that influenced changes in governance at these two institutions. Chief among these, he finds, are structure, personality conflicts, and current events. This book will be of interest to administrators of teaching hospitals as well as professionals in health policy and management. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

What a great book!
This is the definitive book on feng shue! It is not for people who are looking for fluff - this is serious, and well thought out. It has really worked to get me to focus on the important things in life and has helped in explaining the balance that we all need to have. I am now giving this book as a gift to people I care about! Thank you, Ms. Reichstein, for writing such a wonderful book.

You will be amazed !
We all love now to take care of our own health, right ?! Few of us understand, though, the Chinese medicine, unless you read a lot of books on same subject. And then you have to "digest" the information and apply it patiently to yourself. WE ALL ARE UNIQUE INDIVIDUALS. And the ones who will borrow or buy this book will prove to be the smart ones too. Not only that I would recommend this book to all of you who want to change your life for the better (and get rid of your daily pains) but this book --among the thousands written -- is an eye-opener to many other self-healing directions. Beware, at first you will say to yourself that you will need TIME and PATIENCE to go through it (which none of us HAVE anymore!), but you will feel smarter than any doctor in this world, after you assimilate the knowledge in this book. It is better than you imagined by its modest title. One of the best-kept secrets (until now !), trust me on this one. Good luck to all of you !

really helpful book for life
I found this book great for explaining the cycles of life in a clear manner. I think about the book often since i've read it and find it helps me understand where i am. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Very readable
The book can be viewed as having four sections: background, the "discovery", the fallout, and an epilogue. I found the sections on background and the "discovery" very exciting and compelling reading. The sad story of the subsequent bitter fallout over credit for the discovery of insulin is more plodding and painful but necessary reading. The short epilogue follows the significant persons through to their deaths.

The book brought me some useful closure. In the mid-fifties I actually saw and heard Dr. Best when he was visiting San Francisco and was invited to speak to my class in medical school. At the time I vaguely realized that I was in the presence of someone of importance in medical history. Bliss' book has made me appreciate the opportunity much more.

By the way, Bliss fails to mention Best's textbook of physiology, a work that was the standard textbook for literally generations of medical student. Best's textbook was coauthored by the N.B. Taylor who is mentioned very briefly on page 91 of Bliss' book.

Excellent and Vivid
This fine book is perhaps the best single narrative account of a major medical breakthrough. Bliss's background is not in medicine or biology but rather in Canadian history, politics, and Canadian cultural history. Prior to writing this book, he wrote what is probably the definitive biography of Frederick Banting and more recently he produced a highly praised biography of William Osler. One of the best things about this book is the broad perspective that Bliss brings to the subject. The exciting story of the isolation of insulin is grounded in a well laid out explanation of the social and cultural circumstances of these events. The situation of Canadian society, the nature of academic life, and the consequences of a great discovery being made in a Canadian city are laid out very well. Bliss is excellent on the science as well. He is a fine writer explains the background and events of the isolation very well. He really shows the team nature of this event and of scientific activity in general. He is very careful to delineate the contributions of all participants and shows how a group effort was really necessary to isolate insulin. A signficant point of revision is his emphasis of the role of JRR MacLeod, the Professor of Physiology at Toronto. In traditional accounts, he is a scientific bad guy who hijacks credit from Banting and Best. In Bliss's account, he is an important contributor who was probably victimized by Canadian nationalism. Bliss is very good as well on diabetes as a clinical problem, the impact of the isolation of insulin, and difficulties of moving from laboratory work to mass production. A fun and informative book that can be enjoyed by specialists and the general reading public.

Like you were there
This incredibly well documented book must be the definitive story of the discovery of insulin. More exciting than any novel, Michael Bliss makes you feel as though you are in the lab with Banting and Best during the frantic summer of 1921. You can almost hear the dogs breathing, feel the excitement of the researchers and the frustration of the patients for whom obtaining the initially rare and precious substance meant the difference between life and death. The book explains the complexities, the jealousies, and the bitterness associated with the discovery, and how difficult it was (and still is) to state with certainty how important was each person's contribution. Bliss is not only a great historian, he is a wonderful story-teller too. Anyone who has diabetes, has cared for a diabetic, knows someone with diabetes or has even heard of the word "diabetes"should read this book. I read it from cover to cover on a transatlantic flight. This is the first book by Michael Bliss I have read - it won't be the last.

decent info
Would have preferred more information

Excellent and readable work of medical history
Bliss's book is a real page-turner and deserves a much wider reading. The research is solid, and he does a great job of drawing the sometimes sordid details of medical discovery and controversy. He makes an excellent point that those of us who are non-diabetics should remember--there's still no cure. ... Read more

Book Description

In the winter of 1664-65, a bitter cold descended on London in the days before Christmas. Above the city, an unusually bright comet traced an arc in the sky, exciting much comment and portending "horrible windes and tempests." And in the remote, squalid precinct of St. Giles-in-the-Fields outside the city wall, Goodwoman Phillips was pronounced dead of the plague. Her house was locked up and the phrase "Lord Have Mercy On Us" was painted on the door in red. By the following Christmas, the pathogen that had felled Goodwoman Phillips would go on to kill nearly 100,000 people living in and around London—almost a third of those who did not flee. This epidemic had a devastating effect on the city's economy and social fabric, as well as on those who lived through it. Yet somehow the city continued to function and the activities of daily life went on.

In The Great Plague, historian A. Lloyd Moote and microbiologist Dorothy C. Moote provide an engrossing and deeply informed account of this cataclysmic plague year. At once sweeping and intimate, their narrative takes readers from the palaces of the city's wealthiest citizens to the slums that housed the vast majority of London's inhabitants to the surrounding countryside with those who fled. The Mootes reveal that, even at the height of the plague, the city did not descend into chaos. Doctors, apothecaries, surgeons, and clergy remained in the city to care for the sick; parish and city officials confronted the crisis with all the legal tools at their disposal; and commerce continued even as businesses shut down.

To portray life and death in and around London, the authors focus on the experiences of nine individuals—among them an apothecary serving a poor suburb, the rector of the city's wealthiest parish, a successful silk merchant who was also a city alderman, a country gentleman, and famous diarist Samuel Pepys. Through letters and diaries, the Mootes offer fresh interpretations of key issues in the history of the Great Plague: how different communities understood and experienced the disease; how medical, religious, and government bodies reacted; how well the social order held together; the economic and moral dilemmas people faced when debating whether to flee the city; and the nature of the material, social, and spiritual resources sustaining those who remained.

Underscoring the human dimensions of the epidemic, Lloyd and Dorothy Moote dramatically recast the history of the Great Plague and offer a masterful portrait of a city and its inhabitants besieged by—and defiantly resisting—unimaginable horror. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Human Side of Plague
The word "plague" is one of the most dreaded in Europe. For over a thousand years, Europe was the victim of a series of epidemics which decimated the population. One of the last of these epidemics was the Great Plague of London in 1665 that killed probably a third of the population and left few families untouched.

Plagues are a huge subject. Even today there is little agreement between medical experts as to which pandemics were caused by Yersinia pestis (the bacillus almost certainly responsible for the 1665 plague); what was the contagiousness and morbidity of the various strains of plague; and what were all the ways that it could be transmitted to humans. Then there are all the complicated social questions to sort out: What was cause, what effect, and what coincidence? All this has to be carefully determined from the artifacts left by a largely superstitious and semi-literate society in desperate times.

The husband and wife team of Lloyd and Dorothy Moote have pooled their skills in European history and medical research to examine the human side of the Great Plague. By going back to original source materials, they have provided an intimate picture of life during the plague year that is as free as possible from the myths and misunderstandings that have grown up around the subject. Most valuably, their interpretation of events is sensitive to the knowledge and beliefs of the people at the time. This was an afflicted community only three hundred years after the Black Death - one of the world's greatest horrors - and two hundred years before scientists such as Filippo Pacini, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch would connect disease to an "organic, living substance of a parasitic nature."

Other books on the plague have tended to concentrate on the epidemiological and political aspects of pandemics. "The Great Plague: The Story of London's Most Deadly Year" is a very welcome addition to the literature because of its careful and sympathetic treatment of the human side of plague. ... Read more

Book Description

Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives, more people than those perished in the fighting of the First World War.It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans.Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today.In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event.In a new edition, with a new preface discussing the recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic, America's Forgotten Pandemic remains both prescient and relevant.Alfred W. Crosby is a Professor Emeritus in American Studies, History and Geography at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for over 20 years.His previous books include Throwing Fire (Cambrige, 2002), the Measure of Reality (Cambridge, 1997) and Ecological Imperialism (cambridge, 1986).Ecological Imperialism was the winner of the 1986 Phi Beta Kappa book prize.The Measure of Reality was chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the 100 most important books of 1997. ... Read more

Reviews (12)

Caught Between a History of the Era and of the Flu
Why did the Spanish flu kill 25 million people worldwide? Why did it kill those in the prime of life more efficiently than the usual flu victims, the very young or the very old? Where did it go after its nine month run through the world in 1918-1919? Can it strike again? Why has it been largely forgotten by historians? Engaging questions all, and Alfred Crosby asks them and to a greater or lesser extent seeks to answer them. Still, this book is less than it could be, written for too much of its length as if he were keeping his narrative powers deliberately in check. For those that doubt he is capable of powerful writing, the last chapter stands as rebuttal, with its tribute to Katherine Anne Porter -- to whom the book is dedicated -- and an adult's recollection of how the flu brought home at age seven the early realization that "life was not a perpetual present, and that even tomorrow would be part of the past, and that for all my days and years to come I too must one day die." I'd like to have seen more of those personal close-ups of the impact of the flu instead of the grim numbers in Philadelphia, then the grim numbers in San Francisco, then the grim numbers in Alaska. It is as if Crosby wanted to write a history of the era as it was lived with the flu and wound up writing a journal of morbidity and mortality, and the virus sleuthing that followed. He aimed for a vision and achieved a laboratory slide -- no mean accomplishment, but not, I think, what we or he were finally after.

A great example of what history can be
Between Alfred Crosby and Richard Collier, these two men have written the definitive works on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Subsequent writers like Iezzoni and Kolata heavily use the primary reseach done by both Crosby and Collier.

Crosby's work does, to some degree, lack eloquent narrative, but it is a superbly researched book on the pandemic. Crosby sticks to the facts and statistics and has achieved a work that is well written history. I would recommend reading Richard Collier's work in conjunction with this work to get the full impact of the pandemic. Crosby focuses on the pandemic's impact in America while Collier focuses on the more global experience. While Collier may have a better flowing narrative, Crosby includes all of the hard statistics which lends a different, more concrete feeling to the subject matter. Overall, if Crosby's work is the left shoe, Collier's is the right shoe. You can read one without the other, but, why would you want to?

very good, but it has been overtaken by The Great Influenza
Without a doubt this is an excellent, provocative, and thoughtful book. In and of itself I'd give it 5 stars... But that would make it impossible to rate John Barry's The Great Influenza higher. Of course Barry's book came out 25 years after Crosby's, and to some extent is derivative. But it goes so far beyond Crosby, and adds so much context about scientists, the virus itself, and politics, there is unfortunately no reason to read Crosby any more. Actually that's wrong-- there is a reason. If you wnat tables and statistics, Crosby includes them. Barry does not. Although Barry's book does read better, and has a real narrative flow and scientist-characters.

The First on the 1918 Pandemic--and still the best...
Crosby's classic study of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic-- while recently supplemented by John M. Barry's excellent new book THE GREAT INFLUENZA and Gina Kolatta's FLU-- remains the Source Authority for all serious students of this devastating killer virus.

While researching FINAL EPIDEMIC, my own novel of the re-emergence of the Spanish flu of 1918, Crosby's book was a goldmine of information... and a primary reason why I spent so many sleepless nights during the time I was writing on the subject.

Crosby's book is, without doubt, the classic study of the H1N1 killer flu virus and ranks among the best of medical non-fiction narrative around.

Frighteningly, killer flu and the possibility of a lethal pandemic is again a timely subject.

A startling fact about the original 1918 plague that devastated humanity --notable, since it occurred within the lifespan of many still alive today-- is the collective amnesia that so often surrounds that event.

Few Americans realize that it's extremely probable that they have a family member only a generation or two ago who fell prey to the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic; tales of when the cry "bring out your dead!" echoed along American streets were seldom passed from those who witnessed it to those of us who descended from the survivors. It takes a trip to virtually any cemetery to bring the death toll home to us, as marker after marker identifies the victims of the 1918 flu pandemic. Worldwide, deaths in 1918-1919 totalled at least 40 million humans, and very likely as many as 100 million-- all within a timespan measured in months.

As I write this, an avian influenza virus not unlike that which triggered the 1918 pandemic, if forcing the mass slaughter of chickens and other birds throughout Asia. It is an attempt to forestall the very real possibility that the virus (which already has infected human victims through bird-to-human transmission, and currently has a 70 percent mortality rate among human victims) could acquire genes which would allow for human-to-human transmission.

During research for FINAL EPIDEMIC, I interviewed dozens of medical researchers and epidemeologists. Without exception, each stated that their greatest fear was a resurgence of a influenza virus similar to the 1918 variant, which through incubation in humans mutated into a unprecedented killer of humanity. Based on the cyclic nature of flu pandemics, I was told, mankind was already overdue-- and, worse: woefully unprepared-- for such an emerging viral Shiva.

Influenza was, and remains, a universal threat: As Crosby wrote in "America's Forgotten Pandemic," "I know how not to get AIDS. I don't know how not to get the flu."

--Earl Merkel
Author, FINAL EPIDEMIC (PenguinPutnam 2002)
and DIRTY FIRE (PenguinPutnam 2003)

What do YOU know about the flu of 1918??
The title of this exceptional book is the understatement of the 20th Century. This was not your average killer flu! The handful of other killer flu's of the century (defined as 20,000+ deaths, a small fraction of the number who died in 1918), the kind with which we're all familiar, look mighty miniscule beside this virus that took its victims in a most painful and violent manner. This pandemic, which killed more soldiers than World War I, seems to have completely escaped the attention of America's under-informed and virus-obsessed media today. So much so that Crosby devotes a chapter to the fact that this major event--which, by the way, has never been fully explained--disappeared from the collective conscience as soon as it was over. Some of this undoubtedly was due to (1) no television, and (2) very little radio due to the war, and (3) the war. Because I assure you, if anything even remotely of this magnitude happened today, there would be absolute mass panic and hysteria: the economy might well come crashing to the ground for good. This mysterious and deadly virus remains unique in several ways, including the weird fact that it mostly attacked and killed people in the prime of their lives (20s and 30s). So devastated was port-city Philadelphia that coffins were stacked in the street. Coffin-makers naturally took advantage and price-gouged to the extent the US government had to intervene (kind of like gas immedately shooting up to $5 a gallon on September 11th in Indianapolis, Indiana). And on and on. There is nothing about this subject or this book that isn't shocking. As for the data, well, that's how good academic research is done, for crying out loud. If the author hadn't included the statistics, everyone would have denounced this as shoddy pseudoscience. Moreover, the startling mortality data are fascinating in their own right. An exceptionally well-written, riveting read. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

"A thoughtful account of the rise, fall, and subsequent rise again of thalidomide's fortunes."-Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, in The New York Review of Books.

In this riveting medical detective story, Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner recount the history of thalidomide, from the epidemic of birth defects in the 1960's to the present day, as scientists work to create and test an alternative drug that captures thalidomide's curative properties without its cruel side effects. A parable about compassion-and the absence of it-Dark Remedy is a gripping account of thalidomide's extraordinary impact on the lives of individuals and nations over half a century. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A profound and moving tale
As outlined above, this book details the history of thalidomide, including its discovery, introduction into society, harmful effects, withdrawal, and eventual rebirth as a useful medication. It is very interesting and keeps your attention throughout the entire book. I am a physician and learned very much from this book, including some information about the FDA, and even about what thalidomide is used for today. I would say that you should read this book if you have any interest in medical history told in a narrative fashion. It will educate you on a tragic event in history and the amazing effects of medications upon human beings. Great, great, great book!

How thalidomide caused the greatest medical disaster
Dark Remedy tells of how thalidomide caused the greatest medical disaster in history - but today is enjoying a comeback as a life-saving treatment despite its side effects. Dark Remedy considers how the drug became a nightmare in the 1960s, how it was banned, and how it's receiving new research attention today which may reinstate its use without its side effects. An intriguing medical history.

A Compelling Read for Layperson and Scientist Alike
This short book is a compelling drama, complete with innocent victims, dark villians and compassionate and dedicated heros. But it is no simple account in black and white. Rather it is a textured retelling of the profound human tragedy of Tahlidomide, it's impact on the phamaceutical industry, the FDA's regulatory role, and the pursuit of scientific insight.

It will come as a surprise to many laypeople that Thalidomide, notorious for the extreme birth defects it caused when it burst upon the consciousness of the world in the early 1960s, is now used for the treatment of dozens of conditions. This book details the painful story of Thalidomide's devastation; the greed and indifference of it's corporate promoters; the dilligence and dedication of a handful of doctors who helped curtail it's spread, the tortured legal struggle of it's victims, and the difficult and collaborative process by which scientists discovered it's secrets and are putting it to use to relieve suffering.

The history is recounted on a human scale, making the drama real to the reader. The science, as complex as it is - including molecular structures and the mechanisms of DNA - is articulated in a way that makes it accessible even to the layperson.

I highly recommend it.

Thalidomide Reborn
Anyone who could pay attention to newspapers in the 1960s remembers the stories of thalidomide. Thousands of women took this super-safe sedative, or morning sickness suppressant, and found that their children were born with grotesquely stunted limbs like flippers, or perhaps no arms or legs at all. The dismal story of how thalidomide was invented, marketed, and withdrawn is a big part of the fascinating account in _Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and its Revival as a Vital Medicine_ (Perseus Publishing), by Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner, but as the title implies, the story is not all gloom. The initial part of the story is simply shocking, with the German drug manufacturer displaying incompetence and selfishness throughout the product's development, testing, and distribution. When problems emerged, the company did a cover up, hired a detective to keep tabs on the doctors and patients who were complaining, and kept selling the drug.

The United States was a huge potential market for thalidomide. A subsidy of Vick Chemical Company (makers of Vicks VapoRub) was set to release it in the US in 1961. The company was sure it would get quick approval from the Food and Drug Administration, because at the time there was no requirement to show that the drug worked, it was up to the FDA to find any data to show any dangers, and pharmaceutical representatives did favors for FDA officials. The FDA, and the company, did not reckon on young FDA staffer Dr. Frances Kelsey, who was appalled by the sloppiness of the application. The story of the drug company's recklessness is shocking, but Dr. Kelsey's refusal to bow to heavy pressure, from both the company and her superiors in the FDA, is one of the inspiring parts of the book. She got a civilian service medal from President Kennedy, and it was due to her unflagging refusal to compromise that thalidomide didn't make it to American shelves.

Dismaying and astonishing are the stories of how the drug got approved elsewhere, and how the makers attempted to absolve themselves of any financial responsibility to the victims. But those are only part of the thalidomide story. The other part is that thalidomide is back. Results published in 1965 showed that thalidomide has an enormous capacity to relieve the pain of leprosy. This is important for lepers, of course, but there is not a huge population of lepers these days. More recently and more importantly, thalidomide has been used for HIV; it was found that it was good for the wasting of the illness and the mouth ulcers. From these results have grown the research that shows that thalidomide can be useful for victims of cancer (especially multiple myeloma) and autoimmune diseases such as lupus.

Current research on the drug (and author Stephens has done some of it) has pursued just how thalidomide caused its extraordinary birth defects, so that the drug company now making it could work on an analogue drug that has all the good effects and none of the birth deformities. In fact, such a drug is undergoing trials. Thalidomide, this excellent history and scientific explanation shows, has ruined lives, but it has also caused needed changes in drug approval processes, and still has potential for diminishing suffering.

The Truth About Teratogens
This book is a terrifying and fascinating thriller that weaves a seductive mystery about the history about one of the best known teratogens: Thalidomide. This book explores one of the first incidents that prompted the National Birth Defects Prevention Study, a program which seeks to identify anomaly inducing substances. It also outlines events that prompted the FDA to be considerably more discerning about the level of testing that goes into approving these drugs. 'Dark Remedy' brings a drug with a dark past back into the limelight as a drug with vast potential to change lives for the better. Well written and easy to read this book avoids medical jargon making it a perfect chioce for the layperson seeking to educate themselves about this tragedy. Although these children suffered, two things redeem the situation ... Read more

Book Description

It all seems routine. You come home from a weekend in the mountains and complain of a headache the next day. Tuesday you have a slight fever and spend the day in bed. But that night, tossing in sweaty sheets, dehydrated, wracked with spasms, you gasp for a doctor and what he prescribes may depend on how alert he has been to the work increasingly done by medical detectives.

These research scientists, laboring alone or in teams, sift through the data supplied by doctors from the front lines of disease. Their solutions are often intuitive and they rely as much on judgment as on what the test tubes show.

"Mysteries, with doctors as the sleuths -- and sometimes culprits!...highly addictive reading." (Chicago Sun-Times) ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Great page-turner for those interested in public health
Roueche did a fabulous job of presenting some fascinating cases of infectious disease and public health. This book is gripping enough to keep the attention of readers who already have knowledge of disease and public health, yet explains complex medical terminology simply enough that anyone should be able to enjoy this book. I highly recommend it!

Excellent book on personal hygiene and public health
Many stories in this book reminds me of the famous essay "Silent Spring". The writing style is extremely accessible to every body and yet delivers a significant amount of knowledge, advice, and sometimes wisdom. The author carefully explains medical terms and implications, thus easing the reader's mind without using a medical book. This book is highly recommended to anyone who has a curious mind.

Really fun to read
This book was so enjoyable that I had to ration it out, a chapter a day, to make it last. Otherwise I would have gone through it in a day. Each medical mystery immediately draws you in. You learn a lot, even though the writing level is entertaining and undemanding. I highly recommend this book, and plan to read other books by this author.

Medical Mysteries
This book is a collection of articles, written by Berton Rouche and published in the New Yorker, about medical investigations that took place in the US from the 1940's to late 1980's. Though this book would obviously be interesting to medical students, you don't have to understand much about medicine to enjoy it. Most of the medical terms used are either defined or explained in context, and all facts relevant to the cases are clearly stated. Each case is presented as a mystery that unfolds as the investigators search for the cause of a patient's illness. First, we are given the basic facts of the case: the patient's condition and symptoms, his or her environment and activities at the time of the onset of illness, and the investigator/doctor's initial diagnosis or impressions. Next, we are shown how an investigator makes discoveries leading to a diagnosis and treatment. Finally, we follow the health officials as they track the source of the epidemic.
Though I have no connection to the medical field, I found these articles very interesting, and I think I've learned a lot from them. However, I wish someone could have added a post-script to each of the articles with an update on some of the information. For example, one of the articles (written in 1944) said that 2% of American pigs were carriers of trichinosis. I would like to know what the statistics are now. Besides that minor complaint, I loved the book and would recommend it to any curious reader who loves to learn about new things.

Gripping articles on epidemiology and public health.
I brought a bunch of books home from my office and this was one of them. I had forgotten about it, and I have just read it again. Roueche was an excellent journalist writing for the New Yorker. He wrote about public health starting way back in 1944. This book is fascinating for several reasons. Not only is it a good explanation of what epidemiologists do for a living (the ones who don't deal with Level 4 viruses but the everyday disasters that still happen), but it is also a great history of public health in the U.S. Roueche was not a disaster monger. Rather he wrote about the men and women who literally had to hunt down clues about diseases, food-borne pathogens, stupid things parents did that led to the development of child safe medicine containers, etc. Some of these men and women put their lives on the line, and continue to do so when there are outbreaks of emerging diseases like Hantavirus in the Four Corners region, dealing with increasing cases of food poisoning, and now with the problems with prions (mad cow disease). He wrote in such a way to give us history and details that many other writers of health history often leave out. The information concerning the increasing amount of rabies being seen in the U.S. was news to me...I always thought it was native to this country, but apparently before the 1950's it was rarely seen. The chapter on aspirin, gave wonderful historical background, and brought attention to the need to make children understand that any medicine, whether flavored or not, is not candy. This book is a good recommendation for students in med school, for those who are interested in public health, and I think for high school science students to see the practical application of what they learn. I am going to go look for more writings of his...they are too enjoyable to miss! Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh ... Read more

Book Description

A young physician-reporter chronicles the experiences of the doctors and nurses in a besieged city, illuminating the passions, challenges, tragedies, and agonizing moral quandaries of practicing medicine in a war zone.

In April 1992, a handful of young physicians, not one of them a surgeon, was trapped along with 50,000 men, women, and children in the embattled enclave of Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. There the doctors faced the most intense professional, ethical, and personal predicaments of their lives.

Drawing on extensive interviews, documents, and recorded materials she collected over four and a half years, doctor and journalist Sheri Fink tells the harrowing--and ultimately enlightening--story of these physicians and the three who try to help them: an idealistic internist from Doctors without Borders, who hopes that interposition of international aid workers will help prevent a massacre; an aspiring Bosnian surgeon willing to walk through minefields to reach the civilian wounded; and a Serb doctor on the opposite side of the front line with the army that is intent on destroying his former colleagues.

With limited resources and a makeshift hospital overflowing with patients, how can these doctors decide who to save and who to let die? Will their duty to treat patients come into conflict with their own struggle to survive? And are there times when medical and humanitarian aid ironically prolong war and human suffering rather than helping to relieve it? ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Fabulous Narrative Skill
I don't think I really understood what the war in Bosnia was all about before reading Dr. Sheri Fink's fabulous new book. She has a marvelous narrative gift. This book reads like a compelling screenplay, yet is marvelously researched and documented. As Chris Hedges wrote in his glowing review in the December 22, 2003 New York Times, Dr. Fink dramatically tells the story of the war by focusing on a small group of brave young doctors trapped in the beseiged city of Srebrenica with about 50,000 civilians. Without access to supplies, equipment and even electricity, we struggle along with them to deal with the frustrations, ethical dilemmas, rivalries and romances of their lives, while the larger picture of the war, the shocking failure of the UN and the West to intervene, plays out. The targeting of medical aid workers in Iraq (Dr. Fink worked there recently, I have read) takes on new meaning after reading her book and seeing how aid is often another (albeit deplorable) weapon of war. This book deserves wide notice.

I think this book changed my life
I picked up War Hospital very casually. I hate to admit that I know very little of the Balkans other than a general feeling that it was war torn and had been for pretty much my whole life. This book changed this general apathy to the region in general and the peoples Croat, Serb, and Muslim in particular. I suggest every single person read this book--not only is it a great introduction to a small part of the Balkan conflicts, it is gripping and heart-rending. As I read it I felt chills-- sometimes I had to put it down. It also provides insite into the mindset of the international community who let 50,000 people fighting a better equipped enemy with only five doctors (none specifically trained in surgery). All in all-- a good read. I'm defintely going on to read more about the area and the conflict.

Grace under Pressure
I am only half way through the book. It is
very well written. Sheri Fink has the ability
to use just the right words to convey the
tension, anxiety, chaos and trajedy in these
dismal circumstances.

The attention to detail, psychological insight,
and reserved language, leaves a deep and
sorrowful impression of true heroism in a
man-made hell.

The story of the life and death of these medical heroes
and their war patients surpasses journalism and
enters biblical tones.

Very impressive!

Squiggles

doctors facing overwhelming odds carry on
A highly graphic and very well written account of physicians carrying on the treatment of patients under fire and under the most difficult and stressful conditions during the largely successful genocidal attack and extermination of non-Serbs by the Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica and eastern Bosnia during the Bosnian war of the 1990's. Sherri Fink' account is largely a dispassionate depiction that puts the readers on the scene and in the trenches, as it were.

More war than hospital
I bought this book because the blurb talked about "moral quandries of practicing medicine in a war zone". I wanted to explore how physicians and hospitals make decisions and provide treatment/care during war. Instead, much of the book focuses on Bosnian history and the recent war. While the book was interesting and well-written, it was not exactly what I sought. ... Read more

Book Description

The Huang Di nei jing su wen, known familiarly as the Su wen, is a seminal text of ancient Chinese medicine, yet until now there has been no comprehensive, detailed analysis of its development and contents. At last Paul U. Unschuld offers entry into this still-vital artifact of China's cultural and intellectual past.

Unschuld traces the history of the Su wen to its origins in the final centuries B.C.E., when numerous authors wrote short medical essays to explain the foundations of human health and illness on the basis of the newly developed vessel theory. He examines the meaning of the title and the way the work has been received throughout Chinese medical history, both before and after the eleventh century when the text as it is known today emerged. Unschuld's survey of the contents includes illuminating discussions of the yin-yang and five-agents doctrines, the perception of the human body and its organs, qi and blood, pathogenic agents, concepts of disease and diagnosis, and a variety of therapies, including the new technique of acupuncture. An extensive appendix, furthermore, offers a detailed introduction to the complicated climatological theories of Wu yun liu qi ("five periods and six qi"), which were added to the Su wen by Wang Bing in the Tang era.

In an epilogue, Unschuld writes about the break with tradition and innovative style of thought represented by the Su wen. For the first time, health care took the form of "medicine," in that it focused on environmental conditions, climatic agents, and behavior as causal in the emergence of disease and on the importance of natural laws in explaining illness. Unschuld points out that much of what we surmise about the human organism is simply a projection, reflecting dominant values and social goals, and he constructs a hypothesis to explain the formation and acceptance of basic notions of health and disease in a given society. Reading the Su wen, he says, not only offers a better understanding of the roots of Chinese medicine as an integrated aspect of Chinese civilization; it also provides a much needed starting point for discussions of the differences and parallels between European and Chinese ways of dealing with illness and the risk of early death.

... Read more

Reviews (6)

Lost in the Contradictions of Misunderstanding
Robert Feld is welcome to embrace Unschuld's highly scholarly, hard to read, disjointed text. My primary point is that this is NOT the Nei Jing, it is not the text, it is not readable as such, and it is not a guide for would-be doctors interested in practicing based on Nei Jing. That much should be more clear in the description of the book, but it is not. It should be called "Essays on Nei Jing."

As for feeling buised over a lack of 'modern' solutions, something I never mentioned, or an under-esteemed 'holism'--the main point is that the original holistic theory is obscured behind the great many errors in the Nei Jing.

This is in fact a late stage text, not a nacent one, the assumptions of scholars aside. References to Mawangdui texts as the beginning are themselves fallacious. The origin of the system, and its holism, are deeper, older, and not contradictory like the Nei Jing essays. They reflect a holistic system of knowledge heavily obscured in the late-stage texts we (and all of Chinese history) received.

So, the 'scoffing.' Those who find Unschuld's tone abrasive, and we are many, will use this term to refer to the haughty modern scholarly quality that exudes from the pages; the debunker's knife, if you will. Though modern knowledge advances through dividing and studying the parts, there are other methods of studying nature, and certainly these ideas were not fabricated in a modern-worldview workshop. They were not put together in pieces, and animated by the fuel of superstition, as Unschuld often makes it seem.

I look forward to Unschuld's further works, including the forthcoming full translation of the text, and any ideas he has about the relative age of the various essays. Following a path of 'dividing instead of lumping,' they are not that dear to my heart, just to my mind. But what else are scholars to do? The elephant is not known to those who feel a wall under their hand.

We need more scholarly books like this
Unschuld is thorough and thought-provoking. I will read the Suwen a little differently now, after reading Unschuld's book.

I don't agree with every conclusion the author makes, but I love mulling over the issues he brings up.

Yes, this book is scholarly, and you may need a dictionary here and there. But is that a bad thing?

It is not for someone who just wants to practice in blissful ignorance. It is not for a beginning student. It is not for someone who wants to mystify Chinese medicine.

It is for those who want to find deeper ways of looking at our medicine, and for those who like a little challenge to their own way of thinking. I will happily pre-order any book Unschuld writes.

An important resource on the history of Chinese medicine
An important scholarly review of a milestone medical classic, Professor Unschuld is his usual through self in presenting this material with copious references to support his conclusions. The acutal translation of the Su Wen is to follow in three volumes, this book reviews sources and cultural influences that helped shape the Su Wen. Considering the complex nature of the material in that work, this book is invaluable to the understanding of the Su Wen itself.

While not a book for the general public looking for lay information on Chinese medicine, this is a must read for those interested in the history of medicine, Chinese culture, and the influence prevailing cultural paradigms can have on even medical thought. Students and practitioners of Chinese medicine should also find this book valuable as there is so little documented information on the roots of this rapidly growing healing tradition.

I would also like to add that I do not believe Unschuld set out to do a hatchet job on holistic concepts as one reviewer seemed to think. I am a supporter of such concepts and do not always agree with everything Unschuld concludes. I feel however, that although one may disagree with some of his conclusions, one cannot argue with the scholarly rigor with which he supports those conclusions. This is a great book for the right audiance and will undoubtedly stand as a valuable reference for years to come.

Researching the Origins
Mr. Iannone is free to dislike any book or any author, and to say so. However, his review so misrepresents the "Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text" that it demands a response. Mr. Iannone's description of this excellent text is so far from the facts and purposes of the text that readers who had not seen the text could not know its content, or understand its intent. We learn what Mr. Iannone thinks but nearly nothing of the book itself.

It is critical to note that Dr. Unschuld scoffs at nothing. Dr. Unschuld apparently fails to treat the theme of "holistic" Chinese medicine with the hands-off reverence Mr. Iannone apparently demands. But this is Mr. Iannone's ax to grind and scoffing at holism is neither Dr. Unchuld's theme nor a fair description of the text. Chinese medicine evolved to serve the universal desire for a long and happy life not to answer the fragmentation of modern life the philosophy of holism attempts to address. To accuse Dr. Unschuld of scoffing at his sources is no different than accusing the ancient Chinese of failing to satisfy the needs of a time and place they could not have imagined. Not only were the social and philosophical milieu to which holism responds two millenia in the future but China in the era of the "Huang Di Nei Jing" had its own philosophies and these, Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism, are the philosophical currents Dr. Unschuld's research considers, not because he scoffs at holism, but because these were the concerns of the culture from which the "Huang Di Nei Jing" derives.

While Mr. Iannone clearly feels that some darling of his own desire has been abused, that is again Mr. Iannone's response, not a description of the text. Indeed, perhaps the most considerable disservice in Mr. Iannone's review is the impression it gives readers that Dr. Unschuld's "Huang Di Nei Jing" is merely an opinion piece, not more than a viewpoint. It is not. It is the result of the largest East-West scholarly enterprise ever undertaken; it is the result of the largest collection of artifacts and textual references ever assembled in regard to a seminal Chinese text. It is the result of expertise drawn from many sources, many scholars and disciplines. The text does indeed point-out contradictions within the corpus of the surviving text but these are described as windows into the creation of an as-yet unfinished human enterprise, not the debunking of a philosophy of the distant future.

The "full text" (as if ancient documents were books to be pulled from a shelf) is not present, not as Mr. Iannone implies, to hide some holistic gem, but because this is the introductory volume, the preface if you will, of a multi-volume series that will include, not only textual sources but concordances, indexes and further commentaries. What the review hides from the reader is that direct quotations of the sources are plentiful, well-referenced and perfectly directed to the themes discussed.

What the "Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text" accomplishes is an overview of what has been revealed by a vast research into the extant sources. It is not a text for everyone; it is certainly not a text for someone hoping to resolve the contradictions and difficulties of life in technological societies. It is however an ideal book for those who would look at Chinese medicine through its sources. For those who want to see the roots of
today's Chinese medicine rich with the patina of an ancient time and uncensored by modern fashion and commercial expectation.

Another required work by Unschuld
This is not a book to read if one wants to learn or understand the roots of Chinese medicine, but it is excellent if one is researching the many ways in which scholars can scoff at ancient thought.

If you are thick-enough skinned through broad study to withstand his caustic, debunker's conclusions, it is a very worthwhile book to have--if for no other reason than for the appended material on the seven or eight chapters added hundreds of years later to the Han-era Su Wen--from which have been derived a range of complex chronological acupuncture applications of curiosity to some.

Like his earlier Nan Jing translation, this is a scholarly work that is thick as paste at catching the holistic argument for the theory. In that book, Unschuld was comprehensive but maddeningly inconclusive--damning through a show of the controversies about interpretation over the centuries--while notably not supplying the relevant chronological data (there is some information in the preface). In this text, Su Wen, he damns through a show of contradictions in the text itself, prefering the view that there is after all no 'right' answer, since this is primitive sympathetic magic and little more. This latest work reeks with the haughtiness and grandeur of 'real' medical knowledge.

Unlike Unschuld's Nan Jing, his Su Wen is not at all 'readable' as such...it is a collection of essays on issues. The full text or anything like it is NOT present, though there are copious quotations used throughout to demonstrate contradictions, in order to show the developmental confusion of the authors. These confusions are certainly there: but Unschuld is certain in his view that they are nacent--that the theory is not much older than the Su Wen itself.

Three stars, because if you need it, you can bear with it, but if you are looking for something else, this ain't it! ... Read more

Book Description

This amazing visual overview walks readers through the history of medical discoveries year-by-year from crude early techniques to cutting-edge modern treatments. The illustrated timetable offers parallel chronologies of the developments in public health, disease, diagnosis, treatment, surgery, healers and teachers, medical science and inventions as they happened. Key concurrent world events are also noted for historical context. Each decade is indicated at the top of the full-color timetable. Underneath, pictures and short descriptions show the advances and breakthroughs that occurred all over the world at that time, allowing readers the unique opportunity to trace medical developments chronologically.For example, in the 1920s column, readers will see that in the U.S. scientists developed a vaccine against TB, in France the iron lung was invented and in Germany the first successful pregnancy test was administered. The wealth of engaging information is broken-up into small vignettes providing an overview of the advances of medical science and relating specific stories about discoveries and personalities of particular interest. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Nice book to have around
A visually attractive book that will provide quick information on medical developments through history, helpful in relating what happened in the medical world at similar times but in different settings or places. Brief time-relationship is also given to non-medical events. Bibliography is extense, Internet and museum references are welcome for their usefulness to those interested in expanding their information. Latinamerican contributions to Medicine is greatly ignored by the authors. ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents an engaging, detailed portrait of the people, ideas, and beliefs that made up the world of English medieval medicine between 750 and 1450, a time when medical practice extended far beyond modern definitions. The institutions of court, church, university, and hospital--which would eventually work to separate medical practice from other duties--had barely begun to exert an influence in medieval England, writes Faye Getz. Sufferers could seek healing from men and women of all social ranks, and the healing could encompass spiritual, legal, and philosophical as well as bodily concerns. Here the author presents an account of practitioners (English Christians, Jews, and foreigners), of medical works written by the English, of the emerging legal and institutional world of medicine, and of the medical ideals present among the educated and social elite.

How medical learning gained for itself an audience is the central argument of this book, but the journey, as Getz shows, was an intricate one. Along the way, the reader encounters the magistrates of London, who confiscate a bag said by its owner to contain a human head capable of learning to speak, and learned clerical practitioners who advise people on how best to remain healthy or die a good death. Islamic medical ideas as well as the poetry of Chaucer come under scrutiny. Among the remnants of this far distant medical past, anyone may find something to amuse and something to admire. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

TERRIFIC BOOK ABOUT ABOUT COSMETIC SURGERY!
Elizabeth Haiken, a U. of Tennessee history professor, has written a great, and at times chilling book about what used to be commonly called "plastic surgery," but which has come to be termed "cosmetic surgery."

From the start (in the 19th century!), Cosmetic Surgery has always been controversial, and its practitioners accused of being quacks, often with justification. More than 100 years ago (in 1892), Rochester, NY surgeon John Orlando Roe published reports about his work doing "intranasal rhinoplasty" (nose jobs), and his success at correcting the then widespread "saddle nose" deformity caused by syphilis. Roe's idea was to build up the depression on noses of people afflicted by "saddle nose" problems, and thus help free them from the public stigma of having contracted a terrible venereal disease. Roe's "nose jobs" were NOT done only to make people prettier. People with "saddle noses" were denied employment and rejected as marriage partners (even though their syphilis episode may have been over).

The politics of Cosmetic Surgery has been thick for a century. Haiken relates the tale of breast enlargements done in the 1960's using techniques of silicone injections. Such operations resulted in terrible tragedies, including amputated breasts. When the special "cosmetic silicone" was withdrawn from the market by its suppliers, quack surgeons CONTINUED to offer the breast enlargement operation (made famous by Carol Doda, a San Francisco night club dancer) using industral silicone, even more dangerous than the withdrawn silicone.

Elizabeth Haiken's book is filled with fascinating graphic illustrations of cosmetic surgery examples and not a few "quack display advertisements" (including a current era ad offering penis enlargement and lengthening by Cosmetic Surgery International. The ad includes both an 800 phone number and an Internet Web Site address!). It also includes detailed discussion and examples of various persons seeking to escape ethnic identity labeling, or at least accused of so doing by detractors.

Haiken has written a valuable and, for all its spectacular examples and gossipy talk, a surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent book. She has combined worthwhile history professor scholarship with clear and fast paced writing style. The result is a book worth buying and reading over and over again.

Pop history -- not medical history -- of the thinnest sort
This book is tendentious screed, written by a would-be social constructionist who has little feel for patients who seek plastic surgery and the physicians who offer it.

Very interesting book
I read this book while doing undergraduate research on plastic surgery in the 1920's. As far as I can tell, this is the only scholarly history of plastic surgery done to date. The book was fascinating and well-written, and Dr. Haiken did an incredible job of showing the social climate that lent to the proliferation of plastic surgery in American society.

Interesting, detailed look at the history of Cosmetic Surger
This book is full of detailed information on how Cosmetic Surgery has progressed and I found it truly fascinating. However, it was difficult to follow at times, when a topic was brought up only to be dropped and then resurrected again at a later point. Full marks for thoroughness. ... Read more

Book Description

A little over a century ago, bubonic plague--the same Black Death that decimated medieval Europe--arrived on the shores of Hawaii just as the islands were about to become a U.S. territory. In this absorbing narrative, James Mohr tells the story of that fearful visitation and its fiery climax--a vast conflagration that engulfed Honolulu's Chinatown.Mohr tells this gripping tale largely through the eyes of the people caught up in the disaster, from members of the white elite to Chinese doctors, Japanese businessmen, and Hawaiian reporters. At the heart of the narrative are three American physicians--the Honolulu Board of Health--who became virtual dictators when the government granted them absolute control over the armed forces and the treasury. The doctors soon quarantined Chinatown, where the plague was killing one or two people a day and clearly spreading. They resisted intense pressure from the white community to burn down all of Chinatown at once and instead ordered a careful, controlled burning of buildings where plague victims had died. But a freak wind whipped one of those small fires into a roaring inferno that destroyed everything in its path, consuming roughly thirty-eight acres of densely packed wooden structures in a single afternoon. Some 5000 people lost their homes and all their possessions and were marched in shock to detention camps, where they were confined under armed guard for weeks. Next to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Chinatown fire is the worst civic disaster in Hawaiian history. A dramatic account of people struggling in the face of mounting catastrophe, Plague and Fire is a stimulating and thought-provoking read. ... Read more

Book Description

A riveting social and medical history of madness in America, from the seventeenth century to today.

In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. With a muckraker's passion, Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. Tracing over three centuries of "cures" for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies have been used to silence patients and dull their minds. He tells of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of "spinning" the insane, extracting their teeth, ovaries, and intestines, and submerging patients in freezing water. The "cures" in the 1920s and 1930s were no less barbaric as eugenic attitudes toward the mentally ill led to brain-damaging lobotomies and electroshock therapy. Perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, however, is his report of how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies in an effort to prove the effectiveness of their products. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, numerous interviews, and hundreds of government documents, Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane," and what we value most about the human mind. ... Read more

Reviews (44)

shocking expose of psychiatry
Robert Whitaker has written a readable, well-documented, and disturbing book about the arrogant and sometimes monstrous behavior of American psychiatrists towards those they label as schizophrenic. He reveals that psychiatrists, desperate to show the biological basis of mental illness and thus establish their profession as a truly medical one, have since 1750 to the present distorted and covered up research, ignored risks, and abused helpless patients.

Whitaker spends the first half of the book relating the earlier history of dehumanizing psychiatric treatments in gruesome detail. He starts with the 18th and 19th centuries, when patients were nearly drowned, spun in chairs to the point of collapse, or had their teeth or intestines removed. He continues through the first half of the 20th century, when the American eugenics movement motivated the sterilization of tens of thousands and inspired Hitler, neurologist Walter Freeman drove around the country with ice picks giving lobotomies through eye sockets, and shock therapies caused convulsions so severe that teeth, jaws, and even spines were often fractured.

While the history of psychiatry, at least until 1950, is known to some, telling it lays the groundwork for Whitaker's thesis: that nothing has changed except the technology. The science it still bad, the treatment still abusive, the lying to the public and patients still egregious. Based in part on his own research, Whitaker documents the dark facts behind the past 50 years of treating patients with what are supposed to be antipsychotic medications- known in the profession as neuroleptics-from Thorazine to Clozaril and beyond.

He makes the case that these drugs are often no more than chemical lobotomies. He debunks the myth that neuroleptics normalize brain chemistry, because no chemical imbalance is known to cause schizophrenia; instead they damage brain chemistry. While he acknowledges that some patients find them relieving, they cause many to feel like zombies or worse-these drugs were used by the Soviet Union to torture dissidents. They can exacerbate symptoms, make relapses more likely and more severe, and can trigger violence. They can cause a chronic psychiatric condition when recovery is otherwise possible, disabling and sometimes permanent neurological side effects, and death. In order to test pet theories, psychiatrists have experimented on unsuspecting and deliberately misled patients by making their psychoses much worse. Drug companies have conspired with doctors to cover up risks and incompetent research. The World Health Organization has shown that you stand a far better chance of recovering from schizophrenia in a developing country like Nigeria or India, where neuroleptics are rarely given, than in America or Europe.

This book is a painful reminder that psychiatrists don't have a special handle on psychological problems, and their hubris can come at great cost to others.

Mad in America: A Daring Critique of Psychiatry
Journalist Robert Whitaker does his profession proud in this well-researched, insightful, courageous, and critical book. He dares to ask the question that few in the profession of psychiatry dare to ask: why are the cure rates for schizophrenia so low in America, the most well-developed country in the world?

In the first part of the book, Whitaker provides the reader with a sound history of the brutal and horrifiying practices of American psychiatry (with the exception of the brief "moral treatment" movement in the 19th century). Thus he is able to show that today's psychiatry has not progressed all that much towards healing the suffering of the mentally ill. In fact, psychiatry may be exacerbating suffering in the name of "good science." As Whitaker points out, we don't have to look far in the past for historical precedents for such misguided treatment--the Eugenics movement of the early part of the 20th century, which he documents in detail, is a prime example.

As Whitaker shows, mental patients today may not be seen "lower animals" as they were in the 18th century, but they are now treated as "diseases," not as suffering human beings who may have insight into the causes of their suffering.

In the second half of the book, Whitaker does an especially powerful job of pointing out the damaging effects of neuroleptics--euphemized as "antipsychotics"--which often cause "symptoms" of "worsening mental illness." He shows that once an individual is diagnosed with a mental illness such as schizophrenia, he is likely to remain a drugged, disempowered mental patient for the rest of his life.

I cannot recommend this book enough to both laypeople and mental health professionals who are concerned with the drugging of America, and want to understand how such a sorry state of affairs has come about.

Psychiatry needs to rebut this point for point
I am surprised how many negative reviews claim that this book is sloppy, unscientific, romantic, biased. To these reviewers I say: let biopsychiatry rebut the allegations of this book point for point, and we'll see who is sloppy, romantic, unscientific, biased. Biopsychiatry has tons of money - the drug companies spend over 20 billion dollars a year on promotion. If they truly want to correct the "misinformation" in this book (and others, like David Healy's new book, Let them Eat Prozac), they have the money to try.

If the books of Whitaker and others are as dangerous and misleading as biopsychiatry claims, one would think they'd be eager to rebut them fact for fact. But they do not. Professionals and the public need to demand an end to the evasion.

The expose psychiatry has needed for years
As a psychiatrist since 1947, I cannot praise sufficiently Robert Whitaker's superb expose of how my specialty's intoxication with drugs has destroyed its ability to help its patients. He describes the fraudulence .of the entire psychopharmaceutical revolution, and exposes hidden facts, such as the worsenng treatment results in schizophrenia, the most serious mental disorder, and how those who have recovered from thse disorders did so for the most part without drugs. It is unfortunate .that drug-company-influenced professionals have prevented this important book from getting the major publication reviews which it certainly desrves....

A disturbing book from a second-class "reporter"
The author clearly demonstrates his own biases and betrays the supposedly objectivity against which a good reporter's work should be judged. Thus, Mr. Whitaker demonstrates himself to be a second-class reporter. The book is based on nothing more than poorly-researched and outdated materials. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Not really about Medicine, more like Epistemology
In 1963 M. Foucault published The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Passing on into the medical gaze from the "unreasoned" being "unhealthy", the topic is one more time - health. The Birth of the Clinic is an elucidation of M. Foucault's immense research pursuing his "archaeology," searching for archival material in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. In this work M. Foucault shows us how at the start of the 19th century yet more discontinuity occurred. In the Classical Period we see the eruption of the practice of clinical medicine. The goal beforehand, according to M. Foucault had been to get rid of distress and to restore well-being. In the Classical Period, the diseased body itself became the central point of medical gaze, here we see a momentous shift in medicine. The common sense notion of "health" was uprooted with the aim of mending the patient to a condition of "normalcy". In The Birth of the Clinic, we see the discipline of medicine grow and change into a science, and within this backdrop we see medicine tied together with sciences such as anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and biology. Taking its place with the institutions in society brings medicine into a place that associates it with other political and social institutions.

The concept of "normality" has political and social implications. If you are ill, de facto you are not "normal". M. Foucault makes the link here with other works such as Madness and Civilization, where madness ran counter to the socially agreeable idea of what was normal which put one in at the mercy of the asylum. Similarly, in the realm of medicine the clinic evolves. Within this framework, M. Foucault performs, once again, his archeology to explore the ever shifting power relations that occur with one more knowledge. The premise for all these shifts come full circle in The Order of Things were he examines how these Epistemes and discourse became a foundational consideration. If M. Foucault was worried about being labeled a Structuralist - this book is proof positive that he may not have ended as a Structuralist but he certainly started as one.

After that almost thre