Synopses & Reviews
In the years following World War II, medicine won major battles against smallpox, diphtheria, and polio. In the same period it also produced treatments to control the progress of Parkinsons, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia. It made realities of open-heart surgery, organ transplants, test-tube babies. Unquestionably, the medical accomplishments of the postwar years stand at the forefront of human endeavor, yet progress in recent decades has slowed nearly to a halt. In this judicious examination of medicine in our times, which has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, medical doctor and columnist James Le Fanu both surveys the glories of medicine in the postwar years and analyzes the factors that for the past twenty-five years have increasingly widened the gulf between achievement and advancement: the social theories of medicine, ethical issues, and political debates over health care that have hobbled the development of vaccines and discovery of new miracle” cures. While fully demonstrating the extraordinary progress effected by medical research in the latter half of the twentieth century, Le Fanu also identifies the perils that confront medicine in the twenty-first. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs add to what the Los Angeles Times cited as a sobering, contrarian challenge” to the nostrum of medicine as a never-ending font of miracle cures.” [From] a respected science writer ... important information that ... has been overlooked or ignored by many physicians.”New Republic Provocative and engrossing and informative.”Houston Chronicle Marvelously written, meticulously researched ... one of the most thought-provoking and important works to appear in recent years.”Choice
Review
"Between Flesh and Steel is a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in history."—NYMAS Review
Synopsis
Over the last five centuries, the development of modern weapons and warfare has created an entirely new set of challenges for practitioners in the field of military medicine. Between Flesh and Steel traces the historical development of military medicine from the Middle Ages to modern times. Military historian Richard A. Gabriel focuses on three key elements: the modifications in warfare and weapons whose increased killing power radically changed the medical challenges that battle surgeons faced in dealing with casualties, advancements in medical techniques that increased the effectiveness of military medical care, and changes that finally brought about the establishment of military medical care system in modern times. Others topics include the rise of the military surgeon, the invention of anesthesia, and the emergence of such critical disciplines as military psychiatry and bacteriology. The approach is chronological—century by century and war by war, including Iraq and Afghanistan—and cross-cultural in that it examines developments in all of the major armies of the West: British, French, Russian, German, and American. Between Flesh and Steel is the most comprehensive book on the market about the evolution of modern military medicine.
About the Author
James Le Fanu, M.D., is a medical columnist for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph as well as a writer for the Times, the Spectator, and GQ.