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Zusatztext “[González-Crussi fuses] science! literature! and personal history into highly civilized artifacts.” –The Washington Post! on There Is a World Elsewhere Informationen zum Autor F. González-Crussi Klappentext Insightful, informed, and at times controversial in its conclusions, A Short History of Medicine offers an exceptional introduction to the major and many minor facets of its subject. In this lively, learned, and wholly engrossing volume, F. González-Crussi presents a brief yet authoritative five-hundred-year history of the science, the philosophy, and the controversies of modern medicine. While this illuminating work mainly explores Western medicine over the past five centuries, González-Crussi also describes how modern medicine's roots extend to both Greco-Roman antiquity and Eastern medical traditions. Covered here in engaging detail are the birth of anatomy and the practice of dissections; the transformation of surgery from a gruesome art to a sophisticated medical specialty; a short history of infectious diseases; the evolution of the diagnostic process; advances in obstetrics and anesthesia; and modern psychiatric therapies and the challenges facing organized medicine today. Written by a renowned author and educator, this book gives us the very essence of our search to mitigate suffering, save lives, and unlock the mysteries of the human animal. "[González-Crussi fuses] science, literature, and personal history into highly civilized artifacts.” -The Washington Post, on There Is a World ElsewhereIf Western medicine is unique, it is because it made the body an object of systematic, scientific study. This is not stating the obvious. The human body has innumerable symbolic meanings, all emotionally charged and often contradictory. Turning it into an object of orderly inquiry and meticulous investigation was no small achievement. It seems that for some cultures, the body hardly exists at all. Certain aborigines of New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, use the same words to name the parts of the body and the plants or other objects of their natural environment, between which they perceive a resemblance. For instance, the skin of the body and the bark of trees are designated by the same term; the identical word is used for the flesh of human limbs and the pulp of fruits; and the various inner organs share names with the produce that they outwardly resemble. In this society the body is not thought of as an independent entity but is indistinguishable from its surroundings. Similarly, in European societies during the Middle Ages and in certain communities in more recent times, alchemical notions have linked various parts of the body to the constellations of the sky: Aries “rules” the head; Leo, the heart; Scorpio, the genitals; and so on. The body lacks a clear border; in the elemental imagination, it merges with the rest of the cosmos. To cut or incise the body, as in anatomical dissection, would have seemed an aggression against the continuum that linked man and his environment, an attempt against the unity of the world. The impulse to study the body’s anatomy could hardly have arisen in a society in which such concepts prevailed. Other societies surrounded the body with religious sentiments. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, in which man was created in God’s image, the body is a temple. Thus, it deserves solemn respect. On the other hand, the same tradition gave rise to ascetic movements in which the body was a repository of sin, a despicable, filthy thing that ought not to be made the center of an honest man’s concerns, much less an object of serious study. Either stance was contrary to anatomical investigation. In the Middle Ages, all intellectual activity resided in the Catholic Church, but no clergyman ever distinguished himself as a surgeon or even as a barber (the profession which was then in charge of minor surgical proc...
