| Description |
vi, 214 p. ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction: the history of our present complaint -- Tyranny of diagnosis: sprecific entities and individual experience -- Contested boundaries: psychiatry, disease, and diagnosis -- Banishing risk: or the more things change, the more they remain the same -- Pathologies of progress: the idea of civilization as risk -- The new enchantment: genetics, medicine, and society -- Alternative to what? complementary to whom? -- Holism in twentieth-century medicine -- Mechanism and morality: on bioethics in context -- Anticipated consequences: historians, history, and health policy. |
| Summary |
Historian of medicine Rosenberg presents an analysis of the current tensions in American medicine. Situating these tensions within their historical and social contexts, Rosenberg investigates the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its moral and intellectual responsibilities, and what prospective patients--all of us--expect from medicine and the medical profession. He explores the nature and definition of disease and how ideas of disease causation reflect social values and cultural negotiations. His analyses of alternative medicine and bioethics consider the historically specific ways in which we define and seek to control what is appropriately medical. At a time when clinical care and biomedical research generate as much angst as they offer cures, this volume provides valuable insight into how the practice of medicine has evolved, where it is going, and how lessons from history can improve its prognosis.--From publisher description. |
| Subject |
Medicine -- United States -- History.
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Medical care -- United States -- History.
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Patient Satisfaction -- United States. |
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Delivery of Health Care -- United States. |
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Health Policy -- United States. |
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Physician's Role -- United States. |
| ISBN |
080188716X (pbk. : alk. paper) |
|
9780801887161 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
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9780801887154 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
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0801887151 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
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