Synopses & Reviews
From the days of Hippocratic 'bedside medicine' to the advent of the CAT scanner, doctors have always relied on their senses in diagnosing and treating disease. Medical education, from the apprenticeship, to the rise of the laboratory, has sought to train the senses of students who must act like medical detectives. At the same time, debate since antiquity has pondered the hierarchy of the senses - from noble vision to baser touch and smell. From the rise of medical and, particularly, anatomical illustration in the Renaissance, doctors have been concerned about the relationship between image and reality. This richly-illustrated collection of essays explores many facets of these themes. They range widely over time and space and shed much new light on medical perceptions and the cultural dimensions of the healing arts.
Review
"...should be a substantial addition to the library of those interested in appreciating how medicine arrived at the position it enjoys today." James J. Foody, Doody's"If one cares for the preservation of the patient-doctor dialogue and the art of the physical examination, for which the five senses and the sixth sense of logic and reason are used, one will find this book well worth the price....The book's index is complete and each chapter is extensively referenced, in some cases with detailed notes. It is an enjoyable text." E. Carl Abbott, Canadian Medical Association Journal"...a scholarly collection of essays dealing with the history of medicine and the role the senses have played in the evolution of our profession....well written and contain some interesting insights....a good source of information on our medical heritage, and hidden in its pages readers will find direction for some of the dilemmas facing physicians today." Ian A. Cameron, Canadian Family Physician"...serious historiography in the classical tradition of scrupulously detailed and documented textual interpretation....Reference libraries in the fine arts and general and medical history will want to have it." New England Journal of Medicine"To conclude, the value of Medicine and the Five Senses lies both in the first-rate quality of the essays assembled therein, which cover a diverse range of themes and perspectives, and in the book's power to stimulate further interest and research in the fascinating topic of the history of the senses in medicine." Constance Classen, Journal of theHistory of the Behavioral Sciences"...an elegant book to hold and peruse....The virtue of this collection lies in its authors' meticulous exploration of specific historical meanings attached to sensory experience. The chronological sweep (from the Greeks to the present) reveals some long continuities that a more narrowly focused volume would lack; a wide variety of historians of medicine and science will enjoy this collection." Mary E. Fissell, ISIS"...a fine collection of essays ranging broadly over time and subject...Chronologically and topically, this volume is well-balanced." Patrick B. Storey, Aacademic Medicine"...a sensational book--in every sense of the word....Medicine and the Five Senses offers the reader a fascinating and thought-provoking tour through the sensory history of western medicine. The accessible style in which the essays are written and the engaging subject matter means that one does not have to be a medical historian to savour this volume, or gain instruction from it....represents the first comprehensive attempt by historians to grapple with the matter of the senses in medicine....provide[s] a stimulating basis for further study into the sensory models and methods of medicine in our own--and in other--cultures." David Howes, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry"Nurse educators, historians, theoriticians, and practitioners engaged in the quest for new knowledge, therapeutic effectiveness, and theories of practice will be interested in the questions addressed by the essays in Medicine and the Five Senses." Virginia M. Deforge, Nursing History Review
Synopsis
From the early days of medical practice, through to the modern age of the CAT scanner, doctors have relied on their five senses to diagnose medical illness. This collection of essays examines the 'education of the senses' in medicine and all aspects of medical diagnosis.
Synopsis
From ancient Greece to the CAT scanner, these essays examine the 'education of the senses' in medical diagnosis and treatment.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Galen at the bedside: the methods of a medical detective Vivian Nutton; 2. Sensory perception and its metaphors in the time of Richard of Fournival Elizabeth Sears; 3. The manifest and the hidden in the Renaissance clinic Jerome Bylebyl; 4. In bad odour: smell and its significance in medicine from antiquity to the seventeenth century Richard Palmer; 5. Seeing and believing: contrasting attitudes towards observational anatomy among French Galenists in the first half of the seventeenth century Laurence Brockliss; 6. 'The mark of truth': looking and learning in some anatomical illustrations from the Renaissance and eighteenth century Martin Kemp; 7. The art and science of seeing in medicine: physiognomy 1780-1820 Ludmilla Jordanova; 8. The introduction of percussion and stethoscopy to early nineteenth-century Edinburgh Malcolm Nicolson; 9. Educating the senses: students, teachers and medical rhetoric in eighteenth-century London Susan C. Lawrence; 10. The rise of physical examination Roy Porter; 11. Touch, sexuality and disease Sander Gilman; 12. Sense and sensibility in late nineteenth-century surgery in America Gert Brieger; 13. Training the senses, training the mind Merriley Borell; 14. Technology and the use of the senses in twentieth-century medicine Stanley J. Reiser; Notes; Index.