Our Present Complaint – American Medicine, Then and Now
Author(s): Charles E Rosenberg (Author)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: 8 Jan. 2008
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Print length: 208 pages
ISBN-10: 080188716X
ISBN-13: 9780801887161
Book Description
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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Our Present Complaint . . . is a timely book. It examines important concepts and history that people need to be aware of and think through if they seek to understand and address the many problems with the American medical system.
–Sharon A. Falkenheimer “Themelios”
[Rosenberg] reminds us that the problems addressed by disciplines such as bioethics and interdisiplinary communities such as that of health policy are inevitably situated and configured by a broader context to which ethicists and policy makers would do well to pay attention.
–Thomas S. Huddle, M.D., Ph.D. “Journal of the History of Medicine”
Cogently written and well documented, the book will benefit medical practitioners, and will be especially useful to those who make medical policy. Highly recommended.
— “Choice”
This collection of essays, drawing on Rosenberg’s half-century career as one of our preeminent historians of medicine, will be well appreciated by fellow historians and their students, but it ought to be required reading for health care providers, payers, policy makers, and patients.
–Elizabeth Siegel Watkins “Journal of American History”
About the Author
Charles E. Rosenberg is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences and a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. He is the author of The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866;The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System; and No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought.
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