Follows the advance of western medicine from ancient Greece, through the contributions of the great Islamic physicians, to modern day miracles such as antibiotics, CAT scans and organ transplants. Highlighting the great medical discoveries, contributors cover such topics as the relationship in the Renaissance between medicine and art, the tension between the church and an increasingly secularized medical professional class, epidemics and the geography of disease, and changing attitudes towards childbirth, mental disease, and the doctor-patient relationship. c. Book News Inc.

After putting down this weighty (in all senses of the word) collection, the reader, be she or he physician or social scientist, will (or at least should) feel uncomfortable about her or his taken-for-granted commonsense (therefore cultural) understanding of medicine. The editors and their collaborators show the medical leviathan, warts and all, for what it is: changing, pluralistic, problematic, powerful, provocative. What medicine proclaims itself to be - unified, scientific, biological and not social, non-judgmental - it is shown not to resemble very much. Those matters about which medicine keeps fairly silent, it turns out, come closer to being central to its clinical practice - managing errors and learning to conduct a shared moral dis course about mistakes, handling issues of competence and competition among biomedical practitioners, practicing in value-laden contexts on problems for which social science is a more relevant knowledge base than biological science, integrating folk and scientific models of illness in clinical communication, among a large number of highly pertinent ethnographic insights that illuminate medicine in the chapters that follow.

"Western Medicine", "Alternative Medicine", "Complementary Medicine", "Holistic Medicine", and "Natural Medicine." There is really only one "medicine" that heals and puts the whole patient, not the disease, at the center of care: Integrated Medicine. This practice integrates all modalities of healing to produce not merely a medical cure, but a deeper healing of the patient on his or her own terms. The Clinical Practice of Complementary, Alternative, and Western Medicine is a scientifically based text that informs and leads the practitioner easily through the maze of alternative therapies. Unlike other books that address the different alternative modalities, this text integrates homeopathy, acupuncture, chinese herbology, western herbology, and clinical nutrition, then combines them with traditional medicine. The author explains the new paradigm of patient-centered and Integrated Medicine and includes an extensive section on the physical underpinnings of this new paradigm, a paradigm that employs thermodynamics, non linear dynamics, chaos theory, and fractal geometry in an easy to understand discourse. The book incorporates the author's fundamental training in the alternative modalities and his ten years of clinical practice, a practice in which multiple integrated modalities of healing were utilized in the healing of over 10,000 patients. The Clinical Practice of Complementary, Alternative, and Western Medicine is a tremendously valuable reference for practitioners who want to learn about and practice alternative therapies and those who want to be more informed about what their patients may be doing and taking, and the influences those self-administered therapies may be having on their care.

This fabulous anthology is sure to be a core text for history of medicine and social science classes in colleges across the country. In order to demonstrate how medical research has influenced Western cultural perspectives, the editors have collected original works from 61 different authors around nine major themes (among them "Anatomy and Destiny," "Psyche and Soma," and "The Construction of Pain, Suffering, and Death"). The authors range from Aristotle, the Bible, and Louis Pasteur, to Masters and Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and Simone de Beauvoir. The primary sources selected to illustrate the themes are well chosen and contrast with each other nicely. However, the brief background material for the selections center around the authors and offer little or no discussion about the selections' relevance to the topics at hand. This book would be best read in a class or group where the texts' meaning in relation to each other can be discussed, but the book can stand alone if the reader is prepared to do some critical thinking.

Drawing on the writings of Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th-century herbalist, apothecary and astrologer, this updated, accessible introduction celebrates the holistic medical traditions of the West, and places Culpeper in his appropriate context as one of the forebears of modern holistic medicine and a prophet of the NHS. An extensive new introduction to the work comments on the latest research and developments in the area. The book traces the development of the Western holistic medical tradition from its origins in the natural philosophy of Ancient Greece to the work of Culpeper himself. It describes and explains the relationship between the four elements, the four humours and the four constitutional types: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic, as well as explaining the functional relationships of organs and body systems. The book explores the interconnectedness of psyche (mind) and soma (body) and includes a section on herbal medicine and therapeutics with a study of 20 common herbs, dietary suggestions and uses for culinary herbs. It also provides accessible information on astrology and the importance of the horoscope for holistic patient assessment. The book looks at the holistic approach to the preservation of health and prevention of disease, with explanations of the various disease states, their humoral medical diagnosis and treatment. An authoritative insight into the expanding world of holistic medicine, this book is an indispensable resource for medical herbalists, students of herbal medicine and all those interested in Western holistic medicine and its origins.

The first book to exclusively use Chinese medical theories and terminology to guide practitioners of Chinese medicine in the use of Western herbs • Written entirely according to the theory, diagnosis, and treatment paradigm of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) • Explains how to combine and modify the standard TCM formulas to non-Chinese herbs suitable for Western practitioners • Includes 58 monographs of common Western healing herbs, detailing how each plant is used clinically The ever-growing number of Chinese medicine practitioners in the West has brought about an amalgamation of many styles of Chinese medicine and various other forms of medicine from around the world. This book addresses the increasing demand for knowledge of how to integrate plants from outside the standard Chinese materia medica into the fold of Chinese medical practices in the West. It is the first in-depth guide to using Western herbs exclusively according to the theories, diagnoses, and treatments of traditional Chinese medicine that harmonizes the unique terminology and theories of TCM with other botanical medicines. The book contains 58 monographs, illustrated with full-color photographs, of herbs commonly used by Western herbalists. Each herb is grouped by the basic categorization for medicinals in Chinese medicine, such as Herbs that Resolve the Exterior and Herbs that Regulate Blood. The monographs detail the energetics, function and indication, channels entered, dosage and preparation, and contraindications of each plant. The author also explains how to use the herbs to modify standard formulas used in everyday Chinese herbal medicine, based on his own clinical experience. An appendix of Western Analogs for Chinese Herbs further highlights 40 Chinese medicinals that have related species growing in the West.