Research Catalog

Title

The rise and fall of modern medicine / James Le Fanu.

Author

Le Fanu, James

Publication

New York : Basic Books, c2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xviii, 590 p. : ill.; 21 cm.

Summary

In the years following World War II, medicine won major battles against smallpox, diphtheria, and polio. In the same period it also produced treatments to control the progress of Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia. It made realities of open-heart surgery, organ transplants, test-tube babies. Unquestionably, the medical accomplishments of the postwar years stand at the forefront of human endeavor, yet progress in recent decades has slowed nearly to a halt. In this judicious examination of medicine in our times, which has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, medical doctor and columnist James Le Fanu both surveys the glories of medicine in the postwar years and analyzes the factors that for the past twenty-five years have increasingly widened the gulf between achievement and advancement: the social theories of medicine, ethical issues, and political debates over health care that have hobbled the development of vaccines and discovery of new "(Bmiracle" cures. While fully demonstrating the extraordinary progress effected by medical research in the latter half of the twentieth century, Le Fanu also identifies the perils that confront medicine in the twenty-first.

Subject

• 1900-1999
• History of Medicine
• History, 20th Century
• Medicine > History > 20th century

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [515]-575) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

A Lengthy Prologue: Twelve Definitive Moments -- 1941: Penicillin -- 1949: Cortisone -- 1950: Streptomycin, Smoking and Sir Austin Bradford Hill -- 1952: Chlorpromazine and the Revolution in Psychiatry -- 1952: The Copenhagen Polio Epidemic and the Birth of Intensive Care -- 1955: Open-Heart Surgery -- The Last Frontier -- 1961: New Hips for Old -- 1963: Transplanting Kidneys -- 1964: The Triumph of Prevention -- The Case of Strokes -- 1971: Curing Childhood Cancer -- 1978: The First 'Test-Tube' Baby -- 1984: Helicobacter -- The Cause of Peptic Ulcer -- The Rise -- Medicine's Big Bang -- Clinical Science: A New Ideology for Medicine -- A Cornucopia of New Drugs -- Technology's Triumphs -- The Mysteries of Biology -- The End of the Age of Optimism -- The Revolution Falters -- The Dearth of New Drugs -- Technology's Failings -- The Clinical Scientist as an Endangered Species -- The Fall -- The Brave New World of The New Genetics -- The Beginning -- Genetic Engineering -- The New Eugenics -- Gene Therapy -- The End -- Seduced by The Social Theory -- The Beginning -- The Rise and Fall of Heart Disease -- Beyond Tobacco: Sir Richard Doll and the 'Causes' of Cancer -- Environmental Alarums -- The End -- The Unsolved Problem: The Mysteries of Biology Revisited -- The Rise and Fall: Causes and Consequences -- Learning from the Past -- Looking to the Future.

ISBN

• 9780465058952
• 0465058957

OCLC

• 783144267
• SCSB-11298795

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library