The Doctor in History

Yale University Press, 1934 8vo (24 cm), XIII, 408 pp. Publisher's cloth (binding slightly dusted, spine sunned, ownership entries on front endpapers). Aesculapius, Hippocrates, Crusades, Black Death, Paracelsus, Vesalius, Pare, Superstitions, Medicine in America, Operating Room, Barracks & Prisons, Laboratory. "The history of health is the cue to the logic of modern medicine; if people know the past they will be able to interpret the present. That is what I had in mind when I wrote these pages.the scenes and deeds of medicine are not to be comprehended in the sentimental story of the 'good fight' for the sake of humanity. They are part, rather, of the grim tale of man's ignorance and hope, his life and death. I want you to see the reeking, sweating, savage medicine man struggling with the spirits of disease - the savage who gave us the principle of nearly everything we have in medicine today. I want you to join the temple throngs and pay your respects to Imhotep and Aesculapius; stand for a moment beside the philosophers who rescued medicine from religion and beside the physicians who rescued it from the philosophers. I want you to meet galen, admire his intellect and condone his egotism."