The Greatest Benefit to Mankind

A definitive study of the history of medicine, from the earliest humans to the present day. Medicine is advancing at an incredible rate. We now have the ability to overcome sickness but also to transform the nature of life itself: in many parts of the world, human existence has simply ceased to be 'nasty, brutish and short'. In this titanic history of medicine and disease, Roy Porter examines the traditions of East and West to chart how this revolution has come about. Covering medical milestones big and small - from dissection to surgery and from anaesthesia to AIDS - Roy Porter's masterpiece is both a superlative history of medicine and a sweeping survey of human life and death.

A definitive study of the history of medicine, from the earliest humans to the present day. Medicine is advancing at an incredible rate. We now have the ability to overcome sickness but also to transform the nature of life itself: in many parts of the world, human existence has simply ceased to be 'nasty, brutish and short'. In this titanic history of medicine and disease, Roy Porter examines the traditions of East and West to chart how this revolution has come about. Covering medical milestones big and small - from dissection to surgery and from anaesthesia to AIDS - Roy Porter's masterpiece is both a superlative history of medicine and a sweeping survey of human life and death.

Hailed as "a remarkable achievement" ( Boston Globe ) and as "a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking...a splendid and thoroughly engrossing book" ( Los Angeles Times ), Roy Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords us an opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to mankind. Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, covering ground from the diseases of the hunter-gatherers to the more recent threats of AIDS and Ebola, from the clearly defined conviction of the Hippocratic oath to the muddy ethical dilemmas of modern-day medicine. Offering up a treasure trove of historical surprises along the way, this book "has instantly become the standard single-volume work in its field" ( The Lancet ).

Hailed as "a remarkable achievement" ( Boston Globe ) and as "a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking...a splendid and thoroughly engrossing book" ( Los Angeles Times ), Roy Porter's charting of the history of medicine affords us an opportunity as never before to assess its culture and science and its costs and benefits to mankind. Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, covering ground from the diseases of the hunter-gatherers to the more recent threats of AIDS and Ebola, from the clearly defined conviction of the Hippocratic oath to the muddy ethical dilemmas of modern-day medicine. Offering up a treasure trove of historical surprises along the way, this book "has instantly become the standard single-volume work in its field" ( The Lancet ).