num_pages: 434
description: The foundations for the scientific study of the body and modern Western medicine as we know it started with William Harvey's discovery of the circulatory system in the early 17th century. But its roots stretch back into Ancient Greece, when medicine first departed from the divine and the mystical and moved toward observation and logic. Real progress was a long time coming, held back by the taboo around dissection - only external symptoms could be used for diagnosis - as well as superstition and mysticism (illness was the work of demons and pixies and curable only by penitence). Paul Strathern steers us skilfully through the maze of discoveries, diseases and wrong turns that have made medicine what it is today - super-efficient, high tech and increasingly Inspired geniuses, such as Paracelsus, the father of medical chemistry, and Edward Jenner, who discovered the smallpox vaccination; ...
language: English
title: A Brief History of Medicine
titlecomplete: A Brief History of Medicine
genres: Medicine, History Of Science, Biology, Science, Nonfiction, Health, Medical, History
ratings_count: 221
publisher: Constable and Robinson