Medicine and Culture: Revised Edition [Paperback]

Lynn Payer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805048030 | ISBN-13: 978-0805048032 | Publication Date: November 15, 1996 | Edition: First Edition

A classic comparative study of medicine and national culture, Medicine and Culture shows us that while doctors regard themselves as servants of science, they are often prisoners of custom.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; First Edition edition (November 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805048030
• ISBN-13: 978-0805048032
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There will not be a new edition..., October 12, 2004

By 

suzyf921 "suzyf921" (Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Medicine and Culture: Revised Edition (Paperback)

Readers of this excellent book will wait in vain for an update as some reviewers have requested -- Lynn Payer died of breast cancer on September 22, 2001. So this will be it -- the insights she brings to the comparative study of health systems are thus all the more precious. I've lived in two of the countries she studied (UK and US) and been treated in a third (France) and the book rings true. An excellent addition to the library of anyone wishing to understand the strengths and the flaws of our health systems, and more importantly, why each system has different flaws!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating anthropology of European and American medicine, April 25, 2008

By 

Karen Vaughan "Herblady" (Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medicine and Culture: Revised Edition (Paperback)

While we may be used to looking at the anthropology of less developed countries, Lynn Payer turns her lens at European and American medicine. In England one keeps a stiff upper lip, as doctors give fewer tests, less medicine and lower doses, even when not rationed. West Germans use six times the number of heart drugs as the French or English, although the three countries have similar rates of heart disease, often using several at once due to the attitudes towards the heart. France looks more at the terrain than the pathological organisms attacking it, strengthening the immunological system with techniques Americans would consider fringe medicine. And French doctors would use a hysterosalpingogram instead of the D&C that German, English and Americans use to diagnose conditions because they are afraid of adhesions from surgery that might impair fertility. American doctors do excessive hysterectomies that would be considered unwarranted in England, France and Germany and, at least at the time of the book, radical mastectomies instead of lumpectomies.

The book also looks at how medical compensation affects the way medicine is practiced. German and American doctors who are paid fees for each procedure use far more than English doctors who are paid a straight salary. American doctors may raise their fees when they want more compensation while French doctors would need to perform more operations. American doctors whose insurance companies would require them to perform a cesarean section after fibroid removal are more prone to remove the uterus than French doctors who have no such pressure and feel that a woman could have six myomectomies before a C-section would be required.

And different organs are looked at as important. The French place great stress on the liver, its ability to process food and to regulate the body while the Germans focus on the heart.

While we may consider medicine a science apart from cultural considerations, Payer shows us that the art of medicine is subject to cultural and economic biases even in the modern European-American context.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a real eye-opener, January 17, 2004

By 

Manuel Ortega (San Jose, Costa Rica) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Medicine and Culture: Revised Edition (Paperback)

Written from the point of view of a journalist
and not a social scientist, this book is
nevertheless a must read for readers interested
in medicine, culture, and sociology of science.

If you are one of those persons who thinks
medicine is a science, I think this book will
make a very surprising read. In particular,
if you like the epistemological side of scientific
inquiry, you could try to extend many of the
discussions of the book to other practices
(social sciences, physics).

My only regrett is that the author doesn't cover
Latin American medicine. (Next edition?)