![]() He is keen to avoid the pitfalls of his project: the “enormous condescension of posterity,” the temptation to dismiss pre-scientific medical traditions. Read as a narrative rather than reference, his book provides a powerful overview. Was I foolish to expect such insight from a telescoping of over 3000 years into less than a thousand pages? No, because Porter pulls it off. I might even get a glimpse of what motivated the heroes and the villains. I would find out what they did before the antibiotic revolution, and how they got away with bleeding everyone for hundreds of years. I would find out how medicine got so big, and how doctors can look at things that are so small. ![]() Here was a wide ranging, up to date survey of medicine’s place in society. Roy Porter’s book gave me the chance to flesh out my paltry analysis. ![]() Someone had told me that Pasteur discovered vaccination someone else that it was Turkish folk medicine. I knew that doctors demand autonomy, but that collectively they make a wonderful political football. ![]() I had an idea about their professional status, without knowing how that privilege was won and protected. ![]() I knew that the medical-industrial complex had become a victim of its own success and that until quite recently doctors could not do much. Before I read this, my knowledge of medical history could be summed up in a few sentences. ![]()
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