The Development Of Modern Medicine

The history of medicine in non-European countries has often been characterized by the study of their native "traditional" medicine, such as (Galenico-)Islamic medicine, and Ayurvedic or Chinese medicine. Modern medicine in these countries, on the other hand, has usually been viewed as a Western corpus of knowledge and institution, juxtaposing or replacing the native medicine but without any organic relation with the local context. By discarding categories like Islamic, Indian, or Chinese medicine as the myths invented by modern (Western) historiography in the aftermath of the colonial and post colonial periods, the book proposes to bridge the gap between Western and 'non-Western' medicines, opening a new perspective in medical historiography in which 'modern medicine' becomes an integral part of the history of medicine in non-European countries. Through essays and case studies of medical modernization, this volume particularly calls into question the categorization of ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ medicine and challenges the idea that modern medicine could only be developed in its Western birthplace and then imported to and practised as such to the rest of the world. Against the concept of a ‘project’ of modernization at the heart of the history of modern medicine in non-Western countries, the chapters of this book describe ‘processes’ of medical development by highlighting the active involvement of local elements. The book’s emphasis is thus on the ‘modernization’ or ‘construction’ of modern medicine rather that on the diffusion of ‘modern medicine’ as an ontological entity beyond the West.

The relation of the progress of medical science to the social history of humanity. Starting with the seventeenth century, the author analyzes the defeats as well as the triumphs that medicine has gone through to reach its present usefulness.

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 winner of 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 "miracle" 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. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs add to what the Los Angeles Times cited as "a sobering, contrarian challenge" to the "nostrum of medicine as a never-ending font of ‘miracle cures'." "[From] a respected science writer ... important information that ... has been overlooked or ignored by many physicians." —New Republic "Provocative and engrossing and informative." —Houston Chronicle "Marvelously written, meticulously researched ... one of the most thought-provoking and important works to appear in recent years." —Choice

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book breaks new ground by situating animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine, it offers important insights into past animal lives, and reveals that what we think of as ‘human’ medicine was in fact deeply zoological. Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain’s zoos, sick sheep on Scottish farms, unproductive livestock in developing countries, and the tapeworms of California and Beirut, they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich historical connections with biology, zoology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern movement for One Health – whose history is also analyzed – is therefore revealed as just the latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines. This book will appeal to historians of animals, science and medicine, to those involved in the promotion and practice of One Health today.