Our present complaint : American medicine, then and now / Charles E. Rosenberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenberg, Charles E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medicine--United States--History.

Medicine.

Medical care.

History.

United States.

Medical care--United States--History.

Patient Satisfaction.

Delivery of Health Care.

Health Policy.

Physician's Role.

Medical Subjects:

Patient Satisfaction.

United States.

Delivery of Health Care.

Health Policy.

Physician's Role.

Physical Description:

vi, 214 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Charles E. Rosenberg, one of the world's most influential historians of medicine, presents a fascinating 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.

Contents:

Introduction: the history of our present complaint

The 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? on the scientific project in medicine

Holism in twentieth-century medicine: always in opposition

Mechanism and morality: on bioethics in context

Anticipated consequences: historians, history, and health policy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780801887154

9780801887161

0801887151

080188716X

OCLC:

122499937

Online:

Contributor biographical information

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