Charles E. Rosenberg, one of the world's most influential historians of medicine, presents a fascinating analysis of the current tensions in American medicine.

Situating these tensions within their historical and social contexts, Rosenberg investigates the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its moral and intellectual responsibilities, and what prospective patients — all of us — expect from medicine and the medical profession. He explores the nature and definition of disease and how ideas of disease causation reflect social values and cultural negotiations. His analyses of alternative medicine and bioethics consider the historically specific ways in which we define and seek to control what is appropriately medical.

At a time when clinical care and biomedical research generate as much angst as they offer cures, this volume provides valuable insight into how the practice of medicine has evolved, where it is going, and how lessons from history can improve its prognosis.

Rosenberg (social sciences and the history of science, Harvard U.) describes how the practice of medicine evolved, where it is going in the future, and how lessons learned from history can improve it. He argues that medicine has been increasingly centralized and bureaucratized and that changes in the evaluation of clinical evidence, government policy, and the public negotiation of diagnostic and treatment standards shaped the system and how disease is experienced and thought about. Disease is not only a biological entity, he argues, it is a bureaucratic one, and it has guidelines that constrain physicians. He discusses how medicine is a social function and how healing cannot be reduced to technical procedures and molecular mechanisms, detailing the role of diagnosis, disease categories and psychiatry, genetics, and alternative medicine, among other topics. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)