The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (Paperback)

Roy Porter, a social historian of medicine at London's Wellcome Institute, has written a dauntingly thick history of how medical thinking and practice has risen to the challenges of disease through the centuries. But delve into its pages and you'll find one marvellous piece of history after another. The obvious highlights are touched upon--Hippocrates introduces his oath, Pasteur homogenises, Jonas Salk produces the polio vaccine and so on--but there's also Dr. Francis Willis' curing of the madness of King George III, W.T.G. Morton's aggressive use of ether in surgery and research on digestion conducted using a man with a stomach fistula (if you don't know what that means, you may not want to know). Porter is straightforward about his deliberate focus on Western medical traditions, citing their predominant influence on global medicine, and with The Greatest Benefit to Mankind he has produced a volume worthy of that tradition's legacy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
'A monumental work... magnificent.' KENAN MALIK, Independent on Sunday 'Only the unique artistry of Roy Porter could have created this panoramic and perfectly magnificent intellectual history of medicine. It makes no difference whether one reads it for its wisdom, insight, inimitable perspective, or simply for its plenitude of information -- this is the book that delivers it all.' SHERWIN B. NULAND

A vast examination of the medical traditions of East and West, past and present. A glance at the chapter headings and well-chosen illustrations of this huge and fascinating book gives some indication of its remarkable scope. The first illustration is of a statue of Imhotep, the physician-god of ancient Egyptian medicine, the last is a photograph of a three-dimensional scan of a brain in a human skull. Between these two images Roy Porter covers in a masterly fashion the whole history of medicine in the East and West. Porter is a fine historian and is always illuminating on the wider social consequences - how a mystery epidemic devastated Athens and brought its great civilization to an end; how lemons, by preventing scurvy in the British Navy, did as much as Nelson to defeat Napoleon; or how the South Sea explorers brought syphilis to Tahiti and tuberculosis to the Maoris. Few historians other than Porter, Professor of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute, could have written this book and even fewer could have written it so well. This will remain the standard work for a long time to come. (Kirkus UK)

A learned, lively history of medicine "from Stone Age to New Age, from Galen to Gallo." Unable to find a modern, readable, one-volume history of medicine for his students, Porter (A Social History of Madness, 1988, etc.), of London's Wellcome Institute for the History of Science, has filled that gap admirably with this fascinating survey of medical theory and practice through the centuries. While he looks at medicine in early societies, and Islamic, Indian, and Chinese medicine, his focus is on Western medicine, which he finds uniquely powerful and now uniquely global. He explores its foundations in ancient Greece and Rome, the impact of the new science of the Renaissance, and the initial failure of biomedical findings to deliver effective new therapies. The accomplishments of individuals are here - Harvey, Koch, Pasteur, Lister, Freud., etc. - but Porter does not tell history simply through great men. The influence of French hospitals on medical education; how German laboratories created a new pathology, physiology, and pharmacology; the development of specialization; public health measures; medicine's role in the expansion of imperial powers - all are included. In stylish prose, he paints a panoramic picture filled with memorable anecdotes, apt quotes, startling statistics, and sobering conclusions. At intervals he returns to specific topics, such as treatment of the insane, to demonstrate the shifts taking place in both social attitudes and medical practice. Approaching modern times, Porter reports on the great strides made in biomedical research, paying special attention to neurology, endocrinology, cancer, cardiology, genetics, and immunology. In his closing chapters, he turns to the politics of contemporary medicine, examining the changing relationship between the state and medicine and between medicine and the people. Never before, he notes, has medicine achieved so much nor attracted such great suspicion. With its triumphs "dissolving in disorientation," medicine, warns Porter, must now redefine its limits. Thoroughly impressive - merits a broad lay readership in addition to meal students. (Kirkus Reviews)

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• Books > History > Other Historical Subjects > History of Medicine
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