Description
Book SynopsisOver the course of a single generation, without significant discussion or debate, a key practice of traditional medicine was almost completely abandoned in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. K. Codell Carter''s book describes how and why bloodletting was abandoned, noting that it was part of a process in which innovation was required so that modern scientific medicine could begin. This book is a masterful study on the collapse of a traditional medical practice.
Bloodletting had been a prominent medical therapy in early nineteenth-century Europe and can be traced back to Greek and Roman physicians. The Hippocratic corpus contains several discussions of bloodletting. Galen, the most famous physician in classical antiquity, wrote tracts explaining and defending the practice. It was employed in ancient Egypt and is the most commonly mentioned therapy in the Babylonian Talmud. Indeed, it was practiced in virtually every part of the ancient world.
Even though the practice abruptly
Table of Contents
Preface, Introduction, 1 Bloodletting and Inflammation, 2 Bloodletting and Social Norms, 3 Disease and Causes of Disease in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Th ought, 4 Th e Early Nineteenth-Century Conception of Quackery, 5 Th e Edinburgh Bloodletting Controversy, 6 Ignaz Semmelweis and the Adoption of Etiological Concepts of Disease, 7 Th e Collapse of Traditional Medicine and the Rise of Medical Science, 8 Th e Current Crisis in Epidemiology, References, Index
