The Making of Modern Medicine: Turning Points in the Treatment of Disease - Hardcover

Bliss, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226059014 ISBN 13: 9780226059013

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2011

Synopsis

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we have become accustomed to medical breakthroughs and conditioned to assume that, regardless of illnesses, doctors almost certainly will be able to help—not just by diagnosing us and alleviating our pain, but by actually treating or even curing diseases, and significantly improving our lives. 

For most of human history, however, that was far from the case, as veteran medical historian Michael Bliss explains in The Making of Modern Medicine. Focusing on a few key moments in the transformation of medical care, Bliss reveals the way that new discoveries and new approaches led doctors and patients alike to discard fatalism and their traditional religious acceptance of suffering in favor of a new faith in health care and in the capacity of doctors to treat disease. He takes readers in his account to three turning points—a devastating smallpox outbreak in Montreal in 1885, the founding of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School, and the discovery of insulin—and recounts the lives of three crucial figures—researcher Frederick Banting, surgeon Harvey Cushing, and physician William Osler—turning medical history into a fascinating story of dedication and discovery.

Compact and compelling, this searching history vividly depicts and explains the emergence of modern medicine—and, in a provocative epilogue, outlines the paradoxes and confusions underlying our contemporary understanding of disease, death, and life itself. 

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Bliss is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, a recipient of the Order of Canada, and an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He is the award-winning author of many books, including The Discovery of Insulin, William Osler: A Life in Medicine, and Harvey Cushing: A Life in Surgery.

From Booklist:

As a professor emeritus and medical historian at the University of Toronto, Bliss has written several volumes profiling famous physicians and their breakthrough discoveries. Expanding on his 2008 Joanne Goodman Lecture at the University of Western Ontario, Bliss borrows liberally from his previous works in recounting how doctors’ roles have evolved over the last 150 years from being mere caretakers for the afflicted to trusted agents of healing. The bulk of Bliss’ account reviews three significant turning points in medicine that catalyzed the transformation: an 1885 outbreak of smallpox in Montreal, the founding of Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889, and Frederick Banting’s development of insulin for treating diabetes. These events, and the painstaking research conducted by legendary physicians such as William Osler and Harvey Cushing, were crucial in shifting patients’ faith in God and prayer as the primary cures for disease to faith in their medical doctors. While Bliss’ slender volume is clearly biased toward Canadian history, his prose is crisp and captivating enough to appeal to both medical professionals and lay audiences beyond Canada, too. --Carl Hays

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0226059014
• ISBN 13: 9780226059013
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104