A Short History of Medicine [Paperback]

Erwin H. Ackerknecht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1982 | ISBN-10: 0801827264 | ISBN-13: 978-0801827266 | Edition: Revised

Since it was first published in 1955, "A Short History of Medicine• has beenhailed as the best available book of its kind: a concise and readableintroduction to the history of medicine, written for students and professionalsalike. This revised edition of Erwin H. Ackerknecht's classic volume is nowavailable in paperback, making the book especially suitable for classroom use.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A concise, readable, and authoritative introduction to the history of medicine.

(Annals of Internal Medicine )

At first glance it seems inconceivable that a historian could, in a brief text, adequately capture the history of medicine from primitive times through early civilizations, classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and up to the mid-twentieth century. Edwin H. Ackerknecht accomplsihes this task and he does it with verve, clarity, and style.

(Barbara Brodie Nursing History Review )

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Revised edition (March 1, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801827264
• ISBN-13: 978-0801827266
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #391,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, Informative, Easy to Read, June 25, 2004

By 

Edith Harvath (Buena Park, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: A Short History of Medicine (Paperback)

This is a very interesting and informative history of medicine--concise, sequential, and easy to read. Ackerknecht starts with the diseases found in early life forms, then reptiles, mammals, and primitive man. He then goes into early civilizations, such as Egyptian and Babylonian, making the point that early medicine had a supernatural basis as it was believed spirits caused disease and such things as magical incantations by medicine men cured them.
The advent of ancient Greek medicine brought a more rational, scientific approach as the body was thought to consist of 4 humors and disease caused by imbalance. Hippocrates, the most prominent physician of the time, was known for his objective observations and high ethical standards.
With the Middle Ages medicine fell into the hands of the clergy and once again returned to the idea of evil spirits causing disease and saints and religious rites needed to cure them.
The Renaissance saw the breakthrough of a return to scientific, rational thought and major discoveries followed, such as Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, which led to many other important new knowledges.
As the book nears its end, Ackerknecht discusses the influence of clinical schools, the great strides made by microbiology, as well as the gains made in surgery.
When he concludes with the trends of the twentieth century, the reader has a new appreciation of how far we have come from the beginnings of medicine, and how valiant a struggle man has waged against the diseases which have always plagued him.
Comprehensive, yet not overly technical, this book is for the layman as well as the medical student.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Short but DENSE review of medical history, January 8, 2011

By 

Peter J. Ward (Lewisburg, WV. USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: A Short History of Medicine (Paperback)

Ackerknecht's Short History of Medicine is great but with few caveats. It is VERY complete and the completeness means that in addition to some engaging stories, there are parts that read like a list of names, diseases and discoveries without much else. Also, it remains very solid but is a bit dated. This is not at all surprising since it has not been updated since 1982. By being a global review, this book skips some of the interesting stories associated with Virchow, Hunter, Halstead, Koch and many others. For example, he spends one paragraph on the discovery of surgical anaesthsia, a ridiculously great story told more completely by Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America's Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It. The fact that there are more readable books about specific incidents in medical history should not detract from this fine book since it would have to expand to several dense volumes if Ackerknect were to go into more detail. If interested, I'd recommend The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery, Doctors: The Biography of Medicine and Doctors: The Illustrated History of Medical Pioneers.

The main benefit of "A short history of Medicine" is its completeness without being overly huge. If you are interested in medical history, get this and use it as your "first stop" when reviewing a specific field, person or disease. Then move to something more specific once you have surveyed the topic of interest.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Big picture in a small frame, May 29, 2008

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Short History of Medicine (Paperback)

Although the emphasis here is on "short," Erwin Ackerknecht's history contains plenty for both the naïve reader who knows next to nothing about the progress of medical science and for the better educated reader who may know a lot about medicine (even be a qualified physician) but who may not know so much about how his expertise developed through time and space.

At the rate of about 10 years per page, Ackerknecht hits only the high points, but his goal is rather to let those illustrate a series of philosophical points. An incomplete list includes:

1. The move from whole body sickness to what Ackerknecht calls localism. In primitive minds, sickness was not a defect of an organ like the liver but of the personality.

2. Consequently, the cause of sickness was not organic defect but immorality or sin.

3. Physiology had to precede diagnosis, which was mere symptomatology until the functions of organs could be determined.

4. Nevertheless, astute clinicians were able to provide effective treatment.

5. Public health measures and epidemics both arose from the same factor: agglomeration of large numbers of people in small spaces. (The same applies to animals, although Ackerknecht seldom mentions veterinary medicine, and to plants, although he never mentions diseases of plants.)

6. The separation of medicine and surgery for many centuries had a pernicious effect on both.

7. Up to sometime in the 15th century, the various medical traditions (of Europe, India, America, China, the Moslem lands) were different but about equal. If anything, Europe lagged behind, having regressed from a peak achieved by the Greeks in Roman Empire days. The European adoption of the experimental method left all other traditions in the dust.

8. The Enlightenment levered European medicine up to a new, higher level. Although some Romantic impulses were damaging, the Enlightenment concepts of progress made medicine more humane and more effective.

9. The advance of medicine has not been linear. Even as late as 1980 (when the 1955 original was revised), some aspects of the old humoral theory, long discredited by laboratory medicine, were proving of value; and, similarly, localism was not the last word, as physicians were again learning that approaching the whole body could be effective. Ackerknecht often scolds dogmatists.

The title could easily have been "A Short History of Effective Medicine." Ackerknecht was very much a positivist. The actual course of medicine was retrograde and crazy in much of its history.

Ackerknecht barely mentions quacks, although in the last paragraphs of the revision he takes an uncharacteristically dark turn: "Paradoxically, doctors have not become more popular through their improved means of helping. The perennial ambivalence of the patient, always in search of a scapegoat, has, with the help of quacks, politicians and sensation-mongering news media, increased. . . . The beautiful dream of the Enlightenment -- that with the growth of science, superstition will disappear -- has not come true.

Ain't that the truth.