Customer Reviews

Medicine in Quotations: Views of Health and Disease Through the Ages

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With over 400 books in my collection of quotation books,some dating back 400+ years, I feel confident in saying that this book is a welcome addition in a field where so many are just spun off small presses without adding anything to the field.

A good quotation book is, by my mind, subject categorized (as opposed to alphabetically categorized by author,) with solid info on the quotation sources, providing a mix of most familiar quottes with some solid new nuggets of wisdom.

This book meets these criteria, taking the idea of a medical quotation book a step further than the previous "classic standard" of medical quotations, Familiar Medical Quotations, edited by Maurice Strauss, which is now 30 years old (though some of my favorites are much older than that, including Harbottle and Dalbiac, Hoyt, Allibone, Tryon Edwards, and Stephenson.)

Another indication of a great quotation book is the attention the editors or collectors pay to the subject headings. This book is a treasure trove of subject headings which have never appeared in a quotation book before, such as: mitral stenosis, molecular biology, rheumatoid spondylitis, specialization, concussion and constipation to aging, with classic quotables, like Aristotle, Petrarch and Duc de La Rochefoucauld, to more modern scientists and physicians, like Ignatz Semmelweis, William Mayo, Rene Dubos and Hans Selye.

The best quotation books help you discover new writers you want to delve into more deeply, by giving you enough information and inspiring or stimulating thoughts so you seek out the full text source. This book does this too. It's a great read, full of illuminating ideas.

Rob Kall QuotationsCentral