Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine)
Last Resort is medical history at its best. No exercise in antiquarianism, it illuminates the meaning of a misguided therapeutic innovation so as to shed light on the dilemmas medicine continues to face in assessing therapeutic options. Pressman has conducted a close, careful, and thoroughly documented examination of original sources. Notes occupy 78 pages at the end of the book; they need not weigh down readers persuaded by the logic of the author's analysis, but they will be invaluable for the scholar who wants to review the evidence. This book is much more than an important contribution to medical history (as if that were not enough). Every student and practitioner in psychiatry, psychology, and social work -- in short, any student who wants to understand contemporary psychiatry and medicine -- will find Last Resort extremely rewarding. It should become required reading for all psychiatric house officers. Last Resort exemplifies the uses Joseph Needham ascribed to medical history in his History of Embryology (2nd ed. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959):Reviewed by Leon Eisenberg, M.D.Copyright © 1998 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.