Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America by Rutkow, Ira

by Rutkow, Ira | HC | Good
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Condition:
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“Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ”... Read moreabout condition
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Item specifics

Condition
Good
A book that has been read but is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover including scuff marks, but no holes or tears. The dust jacket for hard covers may not be included. Binding has minimal wear. The majority of pages are undamaged with minimal creasing or tearing, minimal pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text, no writing in margins. No missing pages. See all condition definitionsopens in a new window or tab
Seller Notes
“Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ...
Binding
Hardcover
Book Title
Seeking the Cure
Weight
1 lbs
Product Group
Book
IsTextBook
No
ISBN
9781416538288
Category

About this product

Product Identifiers

Publisher
Scribner
ISBN-10
1416538283
ISBN-13
9781416538288
eBay Product ID (ePID)
74863760

Product Key Features

Number of Pages
368 Pages
Language
English
Publication Name
Seeking the Cure : a History of Medicine in America
Subject
Physicians, General, History, United States / General
Publication Year
2010
Type
Textbook
Author
Ira Rutkow
Subject Area
History, Medical
Format
Hardcover

Dimensions

Item Weight
18.2 Oz
Item Length
9 in
Item Width
6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended Audience
Trade
LCCN
2009-049758
Dewey Edition
22
Reviews
"In this colorfully panoramic overview of the rise ofAmerican medicine, historian, surgeon and writer Ira Rutkow has made animportant and fascinating contribution to our understanding of the process bywhich the United States has come to lead the world in clinical innovation andscientific advances. This is a book written for everyone -whether professionalor layperson-who seeks to understand the uniqueness of our medical history, aspresented by a skillfully gifted storyteller." -Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, Clinical Professor of Surgery, Yale School of Medicine,and author of How We Die and Doctors: The Biography of Medicine., "We all know our own physical frailties, our discomforts and diseases; some of us even have reason to anticipate what will  cause our deaths.  But who realizes that the identification and treatment of our maladies derive from generations of doctors who struggled to penetrate the mysteries of the body?  Dr. Rutkow's remarkable account reminds us how fortunate we are to live now, suggesting that those of us breathing tomorrow will have cause to be even more grateful to the restless inquiry he describes." --Kathryn Harrison, author of WHILE THEY SLEPT, As our country debates health care today, we would bewise to look back to see how American medicine evolved over the years. Dr. IraRutkow's Seeking the Cure is a fine place to start—a fascinating and remarkablytimely survey of our nation's medical successes and failures, highlighting thelaboratory research, the clinical battles, and the professional training ofphysicians from colonial times to the present. To read Seeking the Cure is tograsp the unique qualities of American health care at a crucial—indeed,watershed—moment in our history.—David Oshinsky , 'In this colorfully panoramic overview of the rise ofAmerican medicine, historian, surgeon and writer Ira Rutkow has made animportant and fascinating contribution to our understanding of the process bywhich the United States has come to lead the world in clinical innovation andscientific advances. This is a book written for everyone —whether professionalor layperson—who seeks to understand the uniqueness of our medical history, aspresented by a skillfully gifted storyteller.'—Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, Clinical Professor of Surgery, Yale School of Medicine,and author ofHow We DieandDoctors: The Biography of Medicine., "We all know our own physical frailties, our discomforts and diseases; some of us even have reason to anticipate what will  cause our deaths.  But who realizes that the identification and treatment of our maladies derive from generations of doctors who struggled to penetrate the mysteries of the body?  Dr. Rutkow's remarkable account reminds us how fortunate we are to live now, suggesting that those of us breathing tomorrow will have cause to be even more grateful to the restless inquiry he describes."--Kathryn Harrison, author of WHILE THEY SLEPT, As our country debates health care today, we would bewise to look back to see how American medicine evolved over the years. Dr. IraRutkow's Seeking the Cure is a fine place to start—a fascinating and remarkablytimely survey of our nation's medical successes and failures, highlighting thelaboratory research, the clinical battles, and the professional training ofphysicians from colonial times to the present. To read Seeking the Cure is tograsp the unique qualities of American health care at a crucial—indeed,watershed—moment in our history.—David Oshinsky?, "We all know our own physical frailties, our discomforts and diseases; some of us even have reason to anticipate what will cause our deaths. But who realizes that the identification and treatment of our maladies derive from generations of doctors who struggled to penetrate the mysteries of the body? Dr. Rutkow's remarkable account reminds us how fortunate we are to live now, suggesting that those of us breathing tomorrow will have cause to be even more grateful to the restless inquiry he describes." --Kathryn Harrison, author of WHILE THEY SLEPT, "We all know our own physical frailties, our discomforts and diseases; some of us even have reason to anticipate what will? cause our deaths.' But who realizes that the identification and treatment of our maladies derive from generations of doctors who struggled to penetrate the mysteries of the body? Dr. Rutkow's remarkable account reminds us how fortunate we are to live now, suggesting that those of us breathing tomorrow will have cause to be even more grateful to the restless inquiry he describes."--Kathryn Harrison, author of WHILE THEY SLEPT, As our country debates health care today, we would bewise to look back to see how American medicine evolved over the years. Dr. IraRutkow's Seeking the Cure is a fine place to start-a fascinating and remarkablytimely survey of our nation's medical successes and failures, highlighting thelaboratory research, the clinical battles, and the professional training ofphysicians from colonial times to the present. To read Seeking the Cure is tograsp the unique qualities of American health care at a crucial-indeed,watershed-moment in our history. -David Oshinsky
Illustrated
Yes
Dewey Decimal
610
Synopsis
A timely, authoritative, and entertaining history of medicine in America by an eminent physicianDespite all that has been written and said about American medicine, narrative accounts of its history are uncommon. Until Ira Rutkow'sSeeking the Cure,there have been no modern works, either for the lay reader or the physician, that convey the extraordinary story of medicine in the United States. Yet for more than three centuries, the flowering of medicine-its triumphal progress from ignorance to science-has proven crucial to Americans' under-standing of their country and themselves.Seeking the Curetells the tale of American medicine with a series of little-known anecdotes that bring to life the grand and unceasing struggle by physicians to shed unsound, if venerated, beliefs and practices and adopt new medicines and treatments, often in the face of controversy and scorn. Rutkow expertly weaves the stories of individual doctors-what they believed and how they practiced-with the economic, political, and social issues facing the nation. Among the book's many historical personages are Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington (whose timely adoption of a controversial medical practice probably saved the Continental Army), Benjamin Rush, James Garfield (who was killed by his doctors, not by an assassin's bullet), and Joseph Lister. The book touches such diverse topics as smallpox and the Revolutionary War, the establishment of the first medical schools, medicine during the Civil War, railroad medicine and the beginnings of specialization, the rise of the medical-industrial complex, and the thrilling yet costly advent of modern disease-curing technologies utterly unimaginable a generation ago, such as gene therapies, body scanners, and robotic surgeries.In our time of spirited national debate over the future of American health care amid a seemingly infinite flow of new medical discoveries and pharmaceutical products, Rutkow's account provides readers with an essential historic, social, and even philosophical context. Working in the grand American literary tradition established by such eminent writer-doctors as Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Carlos Williams, Sherwin Nuland, and Oliver Sacks, he combines the historian's perspective with the physician's seasoned expertise.Capacious, learned, and gracefully told,Seeking the Curewill satisfy armchair historians and doctors alike, for, as Rutkow shows, the history of American medicine is a portrait of America itself.
LC Classification Number
R151.R78 2010

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