You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
By drawing on the latest discoveries in virology, microbiology, and immunology, Mirko Grmek depicts the AIDS epidemic not as an isolated incident but as part of the long, but far from peaceful, coexistence of humans and viruses.
What were the illnesses that plagued men, women, and children of the ancient world? Traditional approaches to this subject have often relied exclusively on literary evidence, but ancient texts are extraordinarily difficult to interpret. Different methodologies, archaic defitions of diseases, and technical terms whose meanings have shifted over time frustrate discovery of the actual diseases hidden behind textual sources. To uncover this "nosological reality," Mirko D. Grmek has fashioned a vast army of techniques into a new, multidisciplinary approach that combines philology, paleopathology, paleodemography, and iconography with recent developments in genetics, immunology, epidemiology, and clinical medicine. Also new is Grmek's concept of pathocoenosis (the ensemble of pathological states present in a given population) and his method of examining such ancient diseases as leprocy, tuberculosis, and syphilis in relation to one another, and to all other pathological conditions, rather than in isolation.
This history of medical thought from antiquity through the Middle Ages reconstructs the slow transformations and sudden changes in theory and practice that marked the birth and early development of Western medicine. Grmek and his contributors adopt a synthetic, cross-disciplinary approach, with attention to cultural, social, and economic forces.
For the first time, medical systems of the Ancient Near East and the Greek and Roman world are studied side by side and compared. Early medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, the Minoan and Mycenean world; later medicine in Hippocrates, Galen, Aelius Aristides, Vindicianus, the Talmud. The focus is the degree of "rationality" or "irrationality" in the various ways of medical thought and treatment. Fifteen specialists contributed thoughtful and well-documented chapters on important issues.
Examines the history of the disease, discussing its possible origins and its effect on society, and looks at the role different organizations have played in trying to contain it
A vibrant city-state on the Adriatic sea, Dubrovnik, also known as Ragusa, was a hub for the international trade between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the city suffered frequent outbreaks of plague. Through a comprehensive analysis of these epidemics in Dubrovnik, Expelling the Plague explores the increasingly sophisticated plague control regulations that were adopted by the city and implemented by its health officials. In 1377, Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to develop and implement quarantine legislation, and in 1390 it established the earliest recorded permanent Health Office. The city’s preoccupation with plague control and the powers granted to its Health O...
Mirko D. Grmek (1924-2000) is one of the most significant figures in the history of medicine, and has long been considered a pioneer of the field. The singular trajectory that took Grmek from Yugoslavia to the academic culture of post-war France placed him at the crossroads of different intellectual trends and made him an influential figure during the second half of the twentieth century. Yet, scholars have rarely attempted to articulate his distinctive vision of the history of science and medicine with all its tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities. This volume brings together and publishes for the first time in English a range of Grmek’s writings, providing a portrait of his entire ca...
René Théophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) is best known for his invention of the stethoscope, one of medicine's most powerful symbols. Histories, novels, and films have cloaked his life in hagiography and legend. Jacalyn Duffin's fascinating new biography relies on a vastly expanded foundation of primary source material, including thousands of pages of handwritten patient records, lecture notes, unpublished essays, and letters. She situates Laennec, the scientist and teacher, within the broader social and intellectual currents of post-Revolutionary France. Her work uncovers a complex character who participated actively in the dramatic changes of his time. Laennec's famous Treatise on Me...
"In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They became obsessed with identifying weak or tainted families and anticipating the outcomes of their marriages. Genetics in the Madhouse is the untold story of how the collection and sorting of hereditary data in mental hospitals, schools for 'feebl...