Originally published in 1941, A History of Medicine provides a detailed and comprehensive guide to the advancement of medicine, from Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Babylonia, all the way up to the 20th century. The book looks at the close relationship between the progress of medicine and its advancement of civilization, it covers the development of medicine from, old magical rites, religious creeds, classical Hippocratism and revolutionary discoveries, while looking at the associated economic, intellectual, and political conditions of life in different nations, during different times. The book provides an essential and detailed look at the rich history of medicine and how it has impacted society.

In three sections, the Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine celebrates the richness and variety of medical history around the world. It explore medical developments and trends in writing history according to period, place, and theme.

In this comprehensive and stimulating volume, the history of medicine is approached from a variety of perspectives to develop a well-rounded, objective overview. Historians examine the effects of society on medicine and of medicine on society and trace transformations in the the thought and practices of the medical and allied professions. History of Medicine explores the practice and philosophy of medicine--as it existed in ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, shedding light on the religion, politics, and social attitudes of those periods and as it existed until very recently in the United States. This highly readable book provides a wealth of information on the history of several significant social movements in which the medical profession has played a dominant role in influencing family life and values, including the dispensation of knowledge about birth control, women’s access to abortion, and the advent of pediatric medicine and the well baby movement. Chapters also examine the failure of the medical profession to consider the historical context of diseases and treatments in understanding diseases as they exist today and the conflict between doctors and professional historians as to the accuracy and importance of the existing history of medicine.

Byzantine medicine is the biggest unknown quantity in both the study of medieval medicine and science and in Byzantine studies. This volume aims to redress this gap by presenting the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of John Zacharias Aktouarios, arguably the most important Late Byzantine physician.

The development of psychiatry in the Middle East, viewed through the history of one of the first modern mental hospitals in the region. &ʿA&ṣf&ūriyyeh (formally, the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane) was founded by a Swiss Quaker missionary in 1896, one of the first modern psychiatric hospitals in the Middle East. It closed its doors in 1982, a victim of Lebanon's brutal fifteen-year civil war. In this book, Joelle Abi-Rached uses the rise and fall of &ʿA&ṣf&ūriyyeh as a lens through which to examine the development of modern psychiatric theory and practice in the region as well as the sociopolitical history of modern Lebanon.