Kan Revan İçinde: Tıbbın Kısa Tarihi

by Roy Porter, Gürol Koca (Translator)

“Hastalık ile hekimler arasında tenin savaş alanında süren savaşın başı ve ortası var ama sonu yok. Bir başka deyişle, tıp tarihi sonu zaferle biten basit bir hikâye olmaktan çok uzak.” Böyle diyor Britanyalı tarihçi Porter, tıbbın doğuşunu ve gelişimini ana hatlarıyla anlatan kitabının başında. Ve ardından, on binlerce yıl önce yaşamış avcı-toplayıcı topluluklarından başlayarak insanın hastalıkla mücadelesini aktarıyor.
Modern tıbbın sunduğu incelikli tedavilerin henüz hayal bile edilemediği zamanlarda ne tür hastalıklar ve bunlar için ne gibi çareler vardı? İnsanlar hastalandıklarında veya yaralandıklarında kime gidiyor ve ne tür tedavilerden medet umuyorlardı? Hastalıklara, doktorlara, bedene, tedavilere, hastanelere bakış zaman içinde nasıl değişti? Yirminci yüzyıla kadar en iyi ihtimalle plasebo olarak işe yarayan ilaçlar nasıl oldu da son yüzyılda çok hızlı bir gelişim sürecine girdi? Eskiden sadece doktor ve hastadan oluşan tıp sahnesi, nasıl hastayla doğrudan ilişkisi olmayan sayısız aktörün yer aldığı son derece büyük ve kârlı bir sektör haline geldi?
Şamanlardan ve büyücü hekimlerden modern doktorlara, berber-cerrahlardan uzman cerrahlara, ilkel ampütasyonlardan organ nakillerine, tıp bilimi epey yol kat etmiş gibi görünüyor. Ama Porter’ın da vurguladığı gibi, bu kitap bir zafer hikâyesinden ziyade, tıbbın kimi zaman umut kimi zaman umutsuzluk telkin eden ve hâlâ sürmekte olan ilginç hikâyesini sunuyor.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Medicine, Medical, History Of Medicine, Health

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2002

About the author

Roy's books cover several fields: the history of geology, London, 18th-Century British ideas and society, medicine, madness, quackery, patients and practitioners, literature and art, on which subjects (and others) he published over 200 books are articles.

List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )

Reviews

[Ümit Mutlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uzun zamandır okuduğum en iyi popüler bilim kitabı -ki aslında uzun zamandır da bilim kitabı okumuyordum. Gerçi bunun için tam anlamıyla bir bilim kitabı da denemez; tarih yönü daha ağır basıyor. İyi ki de basıyor, zira bu tarih öğrenmek isteyeceğim bir dolu şeyi kapsıyor ve insanlık tarihiyle eşgüdüm ilerliyor.

Kitabın tek eksiği, 2000 yılı civarında yazılmış olması. Elbette ki 15 yılda tıpta bir sürü yeni gelişme oldu. Fakat tüm tıp tarihiyle karşılaştırınca bu oran önemsiz kalıyor. Zaten Roy Porter da 2002'de ölmüş. Yazamazmış yani :(

Son olarak, bu kitabı okuyup seven, mutlaka "The Knick" dizisini de izlesin. Alacağı zevk katlanır.

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those ‘surrogate’ books – I bought it because I really wanted something else, so any disappointment is my own fault.

The book I wanted was Porter's The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, his mammoth tome on the history of medicine, but my friendly neighbourhood bookshops never seem to have it when I'm in the mood. Instead, I bought this, which I thought might tide me over.

To be fair, the clue is in the title. This history of medicine really is short – if you take off the notes, bibliography and the many full-page illustrations, you're left with barely 150 pages of text. (Edit: I just counted, it's actually 130.) Like a literary amuse-bouche, I thought it might whet my appetite for the bigger version (excuse the dangling modifier), but despite the clear labelling I unfortunately found it more frustrating than stimulating.

The approach is thematic: eight chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of medicine, including disease itself, anatomy, surgery, the hospital, and so on. So we have a score of pages on each, running very briskly from antiquity to now, before resetting the clock again at the start of the next chapter. Porter's prose is as wonderful as ever, and his conclusions typically judicious. But the frenetic pace doesn't show off his talents to best effect, and the merciless effort to pare things down to the essentials means there's little room for all the grisly anecdotes of mediaeval births and eighteenth-century amputations that you want from something like this.

My preconceptions aside, this is a solid grounding in the story so far, and it will bring you up to speed. It will also have you thanking all the gods, once again, that you were born in the era of anaesthetics and antibiotics (although, as always, you can't help wondering what future generations will consider appalling about our own time).

It has some interesting things to say about modern medicine too, especially the drive towards healthcare-as-business in the US: I was amazed to read that one head of the Hospital Corporation of America was a former fast-food manager who said approvingly that ‘the growth potential in hospitals is unlimited: it's even better than Kentucky Fried Chicken’. ‘In the USA health insurance became a lasting political football,’ Porter comments mildly in 2002. (Oh Roy, if you only knew.)

‘Compulsory Health Insurance,’ declared one Brooklyn physician, ‘is an Un-American, Unsafe, Uneconomic, Unscientific, Unfair and Unscrupulous type of Legislation supported by…Misguided Clergymen and Hysterical Women.’

Porter is surprisingly ambivalent when it comes to giving an overall verdict on modern medicine, taking the view that improvements in life expectancy and pain relief are offset by commercialisation and a dubious record in how well western techniques have been exported to the developing world. (That is, investing in basic hygiene and nutrition might have been better than exporting expensive pharmaceuticals.)

I can't give this less than three stars, because the facts are all there and he writes beautifully. Unfortunately, the fact is that I wanted a lobster thermidore and I ended up nibbling a breadstick.

[Jeannette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.

I found this book in the most random way possible - I was visiting the apartment of a colleague of mine and, of course, browsing through her bookshelf, when I saw this title. Being a fan of everything creepy, weird and morbid, I asked her about the book and she told me that it was left in the apartment by the previous tenant. Quite the book to abandon, huh?

In all honesty, Blood and Guts is not the most bloody book out there. In fact, it's very far from it. The title was rather misleading, but the book was overall enjoyable, aside from that.

If it so happens that you are curious about medicine and its history, but you're not actually into the topic - at least not enough "into it" to buy a more detailed and comprehensive history book, Blood and Guts is the right one for you.

This rather short illustrated history of medicine tells its reader about certain aspects of the medicine we know today and their historical development. You can learn about the spread of viral diseases that we've all heard about, such as the plague, the Spanish flu and so on, as well as the development of cures for them; the creation of the first hospitals; the first autopsies, etc. In case you want to get deeply into the topic, this book will not get you far, be warned.

I quite enjoyed the first part of the book which was going through different diseases and how they spread around the world, as well as the first discoveries in medicine. I started losing interest as we came nearer to our own time and the reason for that is that, I believe, a lot more was happening as time went on, so the book could not successfully encapsulate it and a large part of the end of the book somehow lacked substance. It does sometimes happen when you try to fit as much information as possible in a limited space - things get very vague and loose their meaning (as I remember from my own university papers).

Nevertheless, the book was quite enjoyable for the overview that it provided on an otherwise rather huge subject. I do recommend it to those of you who are curious to know, but not into the topic enough to, for example, start an actual study on the history of medicine.

[Loren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long while. Roy Porter was a professor on the social history of medicine at University College London. His skill at delivering cogent, interesting lectures is readily apparent in this book. I wish I’d been able to sit in on his classes.

Blood and Guts breaks the long history of medicine into easily digestible chunks: Disease, Doctors, The Laboratory, Surgery, The Hospital. Each chapter sweeps over the span of medicine, picking out the choicest tidbits to make precise points. Starting with the legends of the Christian Fall and Pandora’s Box, Porter shows how mankind knew – long before science proved it – that we bring plagues and pestilences down on ourselves. When humans lived as nomads, rarely were enough people gathered in one place long enough for disease to breed and become virulent. Only with the domestication of livestock did disease begin to cross the species barriers: tuberculosis from cattle, flu from ducks, the common cold from horses.

In fact, the book is full of little conversational morsels. The fabled Hippocratic doctors of Greece relied on the theory of bodily humors because they knew so little about anatomy; dissection being completely against the Greek reverence for the body. In the first half of the 13th century, pharmacists and physicians formed a guild in Florence, becoming one of the city’s seven major crafts. The average American visited the doctor 5 times in 2000, despite being healthier than humans have ever been.

One of my favorite chapters was “The Body,” basically a history of anatomists and body snatchers. I hadn’t realized that the study of human anatomy, perhaps even vivisection, stretched back to Hellenistic Alexandria in 300 BCE. I’ve long been fascinated by the concept that Renaissance doctors performed public dissections for the edification of any who cared to attend. (It’s a shame they don’t do that any more!) Dissection revealed the glorious complexity of the human corpse and changed the nature of human thought once it was understood that the body was an efficient machine.

There’s ever so much more of interest here, but let me encourage you to explore it for yourself. When this book came from the publisher for review, I asked several of the contributors if they’d like to read it for me. They all shied away from a history of medicine, claiming their own health had taught them more about the subject than they cared to know. Don’t make that assumption! This book is fascinating, well worth the time to read, and won’t make you feel any worse about your own health. In fact, the perspective it provides will make you glad we live in this era and no other!

This review originally came from Morbid Curiosity #8.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Factoids ahoy!

A slim introduction to the history of Western illness and medicine, with eight themes (disease; doctors; therapies; etc) addressed chronologically. Like the Sherwin Nuland book I read earlier in summer, 'Blood and Guts' illustrates how respect for conventions can lead people to ignore or attempt to explain away evidence that appears 'contrary', and how much we like a good framework (4 seasons, 4 humours), even if we have to jiggle the facts around to fit in.

My favourite chapter was the first, disease, where I learnt that many contemporary diseases crossed over to humans from animals when we developed agrarian societies and started domesticating beasts; measles from dogs, the common cold from horses, smallpox and TB from cows. Humans now share over 60 micro-organic diseases with dogs. This made me think of that lovely scene in The Sword in the Stone where Merlin spots Wart (the kid) licking Bran's nose, and observes that in the future this kind of behaviour will be discouraged, but really, the dog is no dirtier than a little boy.

'Blood and Guts' rises above some of the short-history type books I've read in that Porter's writing doesn't become anorexic in order to hit the 169 page limit. Plus, a terrific bibliography, something I'm increasingly coming to appreciate in the non-fiction I read.

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

This didn't really work for me as a history of medicine, even a short one. Each chapter treads the same ground, but with a different theme, instead of following the history of medicine through chronologically.

That's not to say it wasn't interesting in places, and I liked the inclusion of so many images to go along with the text, but it didn't feel like there was anything to get my teeth into. I felt like it would have been much better done chronologically, even if it was in broad swathes of time: 'early societies', 'the Classical world', 'medieval Europe', 'British empire', etc. Something like that would've worked a lot better for me.

Also, I know he says up front that he's not even going to touch on Eastern medicine, but considering the way we've imported alternative medicines as a commodity here, it would actually be relevant to talk about their development and give them some more credit.

[ineklibakkal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gayet keyifli bir okuma deneyimiydi. Hastalıkların, tıp biliminin, doktorluk mesleğinin ve tedavi yöntemlerinin ortaya çıkışı ve zaman içinde geçirdikleri dönüşümler, herkesin aşina olduğu kavram ve buluşların ortaya çıkışı gibi konulardan fazla detaya girilmeden genel anlamda bahsedilmiş.Yazar okuru tıbbi terimlere boğmadan genel bir bakış açısı sunmayı hedeflemiş ve başarmış bence. Konu başlıkları mantıklı şekilde gruplanmış ve sıralanmış, bölümler içerisindeki tarihsel anlatım gayet takip edilebilir. Beklenen şekilde genel olarak batı tıbbı üzerinde durulmuş, arada bir İslam tıbbının, üçüncü dünya ülkelerinin ya da Rusya gibi diğer ülkelerin yaklaşımlarından bahsediliyor. Genel olarak objektif bir bakış açısıyla nesnel bir anlatım mevcut, nadiren bazı konularda yazar kendi görüşlerini araya sıkıştırmış, çoğuna da katılmadan edemedim. Özellikle insanlığa fayda sağlamak amacıyla oluşan bir bilim dalının nasıl giderek metalaştığına dair yazılanlar ilgi çekici.

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The dread of disease, potential and actual, the pains of acute complaints and long-term ailments, and the terror of mortality number among our most universal and formidable experiences."

I intend to read Roy Porter's The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity at some point; until and before then, I thought I'd read his much condensed introduction to medicine, Blood & Guts. The book is divided into eight chapters, each focusing on one aspect of medicine from a historical perspective: Disease, Doctors, The Body, The Laboratory, Therapies, Surgery, The Hospital, and Medicine in Modern Society. Porter's style is pleasant, and the chapters are quite nicely tied together. Overall, it's a good little book if you want to read about the history of medicine in short and broad strokes.

[Aslı · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uzun zamandır bu kadar ilgimi çeken bir kitap okumamıştım. Okuma sürem diğerlerine nazaran daha uzun olsa da içeriğinde öğrenmek istediğim çok şeyi buldum.Tıbbın ilgili kısımları bölüm bölüm anlatılmış.Hastalık,doktor,beden... Keşke kitabın tüm içeriği aklımda kalabilseydi.
Daha önce çok popüler bilim kitabı/bilim kitabı okumadım diğerlerinde var mı bilmiyorum ama bu kitabın arkasında meraklıları için adeta ders kitabındakiler gibi gibi ayrıntılı çok hoş hazırlanmış bir kaynakça var.

[Jerry Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR A decent enough summary, although a tad Eurocentric. 3.5/5 stars

One of the many books that I 1) do not know when or where I got it, and 2) kept saying "I'll read it next month." Well, since one of my goals for the year is to read many more of the books that I own, I decided to start with a lighter read on a subject I already knew a lot about due to my studies: medicine. The book is, for the most part, what it claims to be: a short history of medicine, from the beginning to the time of its writing (~2002, so a bit dated but not extensively so).

I don't particularly have too much to say about this one. Porter's insights toward the end of the book about the psychosocial trends in modern medicine have been mostly true, which was interesting. The high points, especially Greek medicine, were covered well, and the antibiotics portions were well-written. It's what you expect from a short history of medicine.

However, I did have one problem with the book. While non-Western cultures were sprinkled throughout the book, the focus largely was on Western medicine as opposed to being a true history of medicine - contributions of ancient Chinese medicine and post-classical Islamic medicine, for example, aren't covered much. This isn't to say that Porter has a bias against non-Western medical advancements, as a true global history of medicine would be both tedious to write and tedious to read, but I found less emphasis on eastern medicine than I would have preferred. I think, if I had written the book, I would extend the page length (my edition is only ~170 pages of content) to ~250-300 pages to cover advancements in non-Western medicine in proper depth.

Overall, though, I this is a decent place to start on learning about the history of medicine. It's short, easy to read, and hits the high points well. If you are interested in learning a bit about the whacky history of medicine, you can start with this book.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast and interesting look at how medicine has evolved over the centuries (or even millenia). With such an enormous field to cover it's inevitable that Porter's account is very sketchy, but this is a book designed to get the reader started rather than give them detail.

The story is told by topic rather than chronologically; there's a bibliography arranged by chapter for those who want to explore any subject in depth. I found it extremely easy to read and thought-provoking.

[JCJBergman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry, but interesting to flick through.

[Charlotte Coyne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Julie Morales · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been fascinated by medicine, and the history of medicine captivates me. This book is a crash course on a little bit of everything, from ancient medicine to today.
The book begins with a discussion about various diseases and the arguments about how those diseases spread. We read about mysterious plagues, smallpox, tuberculosis, then more modern diseases, or at least diseases that now had names and that we now had more of an understanding.
Doctors are discussed next, from ancient healers to modern-day doctors, healers, midwives, and even the quacks or traveling salesmen, selling hoax medicine.
The body and anatomy was discussed next. It wasn't until relatively recently that we were able to learn about the innards and the workings of the human body. Corpses were sacred and couldn't be tampered with, unless maybe the person had been a criminal, so autopsies were almost unheard-of. Then there were the grave-robbers who sold bodies for research, and all sorts of other sketchy ways of getting their human guinea pigs. Despite that, as they learned more about the human body, medicine, of course, progressed rapidly.
The laboratory comes next. That was some interesting reading. The Germans and the French were rivals of sorts when it came to research. As different chemicals were found, different tests could be performed, different medications could be developed, and medicine seemed to know no bounds.
The discussion of therapies naturally followed, and it's here we read about the development of medication, from its early forms mostly as herbs, to opium, then to antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs.
Surgery developed at a rate somewhat even with that of the exploration and learning of anatomy. Surgery was originally done without anesthesia and was usually pretty simple. It was often limited to battlefield treatments. Innards weren't tampered with because they were unknown, and what was known was too risky to try. Then they learned more about anatomy, anesthetics were developed and methods of sanitation were improved, until surgery became more than just a job done by a barber!
The hospital was slow to develop. It originally served more as a charity for the poor and needy, a sort of homeless shelter sometimes, mostly run by religious sects and didn't really have much to do with medicine. Then they began to grow to be run by more secular organizations, funded in various ways, while the public hospitals were still financially strapped. The wealthy still had most of their medical treatments at home until relatively recently, so even up until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hospitals began to have more doctors, teaching hospitals developed, and they began changing into some of the behemoths we know today, not just where the wretches went, and the more well-to-do kept their distance for fear of infection.
The discussion of medicine in modern society mostly dealt with medicine and politics, the forming of medical insurance in various countries and how the role of general practitioners changed over the years, so now we have those, then doctors who don't work with patients outside of hospitals.
I know this seems pretty lengthy, but even at that, I still feel like I barely scratched the surface of some of the topics discussed in this book. It was quite interesting.

[Home Faber]

* Tıbbın ana hatlarının ve tarihsel gelişiminin anlatıldığı kitapta, arka planda hastalığın ve içinde taşıdığı mücadele anlatılmaktadır. İlk avcı toplayıcı dönemden doktorların taşıdığı görev ve misyonunu üstlenen birçok kişilik ortaya çıkmıştır. Şamanlar, din adamları, alternatifler, şifacılar, büyücüler...

** İlk ameliyattan, steteskop'un icadına, ilk sezeryana kadar, başarısız organ nakilleri, bulaşıcı hastalıkların hayatımıza etkisi, şifacı ve büyücülerden günümüze doktorluğun ve tıbbın tarihi...

*** İyi bir kitap olmakla birlikte, içinde bazı eksiklikleri içinde barındırmaktadır. Her okura hitap etmeyecek derecede tıp terminolojisi ve Batı tıp tarihini eksen alması, Doğu tıp tarihine değinmemesi eleştirecek noktalardan...

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant brief history of various aspects of medicine. Roy Porter has an accessible style that is educational and informative without ever being dry and obtuse. Great little primer from which you can discover themes snd people to explore in further depth.

[João Conrado · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Puede resultar sorpredente que lo primero que haya que pedirle a un hospital es lo no cause ningún daño" - Florence Nightingale.

[Zoë Kimber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in preparation for teaching GCSE medicine through time, and it's certainly a solid read! Probably a higher end of 3 stars, but sometimes it was a bit dull and listy (especially the chapter on laboratories). It also had a very western-centric patriarchal perspective, and misses credits to women (e.g. Rosalind Franklin on DNA and Jean Purdy on IVF). Otherwise a good read I'd say!

[Laura Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off rather interesting but maybe it was me but it tailed off halfway and I found the latter half hard going. Still an interesting quick overview of the history of medicine

[Stuart Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

By no means a bad book and it does cover the history of medicine as would be expected in a volume of this length. To those complaining that it is too brief I would have to respond with this question: why did you buy a book on the history of medicine that is stated online to be just 169 pages long after the deduction of notes? If purchased in a shop it is surely EVEN MORE OBVIOUS that intricate detail will not be found inside. I digress...

Anyway, worth a read if you want to put medical and surgical advances into some sort of timeline in your head. I must warn you however, it is not arranged in this fashion. You will not find a neat chronological walk through. Instead it is arranged into chapters that address various aspects of medicine and jumps back and forth a little to lump content into themes.

The illustrations found regularly throughout are great and supplement the reading nicely. They are all of historical interest and some are slightly amusing. The author has a slightly outmoded writing style at times. For example, who hyphenates the word 'today'? Well, Roy Porter does. Whilst clearly not a major issue, things like that do jump out of the text at you. Overall 3/5.

[saizine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good introduction to the history of medicine; however, it is very much that: an introduction. If you have any background at all in the study of the history of medicine, then this will be a reiteration of basic historical and theoretical knowledge. It is, like all of Roy Porter's work, a joy to read: lively, atmospheric, and engaging. Certainly a solid choice for a first foray into the subject, especially since the further reading section is full of great suggestions. The included images are also enjoyable and thought-provoking. I was rather surprised by the complete lack of a mention of Rosalind Franklin in the brief discussion of DNA, and also question the flippancy assigned to "the vogue for caesarians nowadays", though these are criticisms that are probably reflective of expecting more than an overview from an introductory text. Recommended for those new to the discipline.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it's all in the title, it's a 'short history of medicine' so, here we have a romp through a vast topic that doesn't leave much space (sadly) for big informations, even relevant anecdotes. The whole indeed is just a fast paced race focusing on things that are quite common knowledge (from the big names to the issues now faced by our modern health care system), providing each time just that little bit extra details to make it all interesting. It's still a great introduction, and, its structure (a thematic approach rather than a chronological one) helps put things into perspective besides making them easier to digest.

[Bobscopatz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a big disappointment. I know the subtitle includes the word "short" but this is far too brief. It reads more like an annotated outline of points the author wanted to cover in greater depth than an actual history. To be fair, this was published posthumously and I can't help thinking Mr. Porter wasn't quite done with it when he died. It's unfortunate that he didn't get a chance to finish because so many of the topics are interesting, and his take on the controversies is so well informed and presented. The book is a nice start to something that could have been great.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is an incredible book - not only in its frankness of how modern medicine and surgery were pioneered but also of the failures and challenges those pioneers faced along the way. Modern medicine is something we all take for granted these days or at the very least under appreciate what people have put in to is - (and in many cases sacrificed). Sadly this book was written to accompany a TV series something I didn't realise till after I had read the book which is a shame as if it as illuminating as the book it would have been as fascinating as gruesome,

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

For non-fiction this book was unusually atmospheric. Reading it was like strolling through a musty and over-stocked curiosity shop where papers have browned edges and specimens are sprawled on pins or suspended in jars. It's also inundating in the same way, full of quizzical facts that I loved observing but couldn't remember after closing the cover.

[Emre Yavuz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dili fazla akademik olmasa, müthiş bilgiler barındırıyor içinde ama kitabın bazı yerlerini gerçekten anlamadığımı itiraf etmeliyim.
Çevirisi müthiş. 3 yıldızı da ona verdim zaten. Biraz daha sağlık sektörü dışında kalan insanların anlayacağı bir dilde yazılsaymış, 5 yıldızlık kitap olurmuş.

[Mrs Reddy Mallender-Katzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I KNOW IVE READ THIS BOOK BUT HONESTLY I DONT RECALL A THING ABOUT IT

[Libbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's disappointing because this is a topic I am interested in learning more about but this reads like a textbook. If I wanted to read a textbook I'd go back to school.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and unsettling read

In a sense this is a "lite" version of the late Roy Porter's well-received history of medicine from 1997, entitled The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. He is also the editor of The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine (1996) and was until his death professor of social history at University College London.

But let's face it, the history of medicine has not been a pretty story, nor could it have been. Most of history's physicians were flailing about in the dark, the surgeons as sawbones and barbers performing crude amputations and such without the aid of either anaesthetics or disinfectants, the practitioners as faith healers and quacks, dispensing placebos or poisons often without knowing which was which. It wasn't until the late 19th century that the medical profession began to achieve some understanding of the real causes of illness and indeed understand how living things work and how and why they don't work. Porter recalls some of the controversies about the vivisection of cadavers, and arguments about the causes of infectious disease: an argument made difficult because of course the microbes could not be discerned until about the time of Pasteur.

Porter outlines this sobering story from the time of the Greeks to the present day in an objective and easily assimilated style. He organizes the material into eight chapters focusing on Disease, Doctors, The Body, The Laboratory, Therapies, Surgery, The Hospital, and Medicine in Modern Society. Along the way he delves into the politics (some sexual) and into the sociology of medicine around the globe. There are suggestions for Further Reading and an Index.

There are also about 40 rather appalling (some amusing) illustrations from previous centuries in this (for a change) accurately named little tome, showing the horrors of past medical practices. They enliven Porter's text, but you may need a magnifying glass to catch all the nuances--as though you might want to do that!--since some of the prints, while small enough to fit the page are not large enough for the unaided eye.

In short, this is a quick and unsettling read that may make the reader wonder about how future generations will view some of the medical procedures practiced today.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Pippa Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eye-opener of a book about how our understanding of the body and disease developed over time. This surprisingly readable book is a history and also extremely thought provoking.
Think about it. Way back when, before x-rays, before microscopes, heck before electricity or gas… how could people find out what made the body work? There was no starting point other than a squishy mess of meat, blood, and bone. How could anyone know the heart pumped blood in a circuit? Indeed, an early idea was that the liver made blood and the heart destroyed it. This was accepted for a centuries until some did some maths and worked out it would require 1,000s of pints of blood to be produced a day, which wasn’t physically possible, and so there had to be another explanation (eg blood was circulated…but by what…the heart or the liver?).
Roy Porter breaks the book up into topics such as the body, disease, doctors, hospitals, and diagnostics. It really does read like a story, a plot involving struggle and innovation. There are also salient reminders of human nature. For example, the doctor who first championed disinfecting surgical fields by using a spray of carbolic acid, was ridiculed and black-balled by his colleagues. Instead of being congratulated and applauded for saving life, he was ostracised and ended up dying in a lunatic asylum.
For a thoroughly enjoyable canter through how medicine got to where it is today, I can thoroughly recommend “Blood and Guts.”