Search results for ""Author Jacalyn Duffin""

Can a disease be an idea? A theory? Does disease exist without a patient to suffer from it? In Lovers and Livers, Jacalyn Duffin provides a lively overview of the ideas around disease. She introduces philosophical theories of disease and delves into the history of two distinct afflictions - one old, one new - which serve as examples to show how applying theory can uncover surprising aspects of the medical past and present. Written with humour and compassion, and using poignant examples from Duffin's own clinical experience, Lovers and Livers is based on a series of public lectures and innovates by utilizing audience participation and a wide variety of sources including art, poetry, literature, medical journals, newspapers. Duffin's first example of a disease concept - the now possibly defunct disease of Lovesickness - had its origins in the poetry of antiquity and its demise in twentieth-century scepticism, but Duffin argues that it may not be as pass as is generally thought. The second example is the new disease Hepatitis C. Duffin demonstrates that it too stems from ancient tradition and that it has been shaped by discoveries in virology and recent tragedies in transfusion medicine, as well as by legislators, journalists, and patients. In any given time and place, coherent concepts of disease emerge from combining social, cultural, legal, and scientific preoccupations with current epistemological priorities about what constitutes clear thinking. Lovers and Livers will be of special interest to scholars of history, philosophy, and medicine, as well as many others.

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Sometimes, history can solve a medical mystery; at other times, it can point to the right treatment or console a despairing doctor by demonstrating a timeless connection to unchanging aspects of human existence. In Clio in the Clinic, twenty-three doctors, each of whom is also an accomplished historian, write autobiographically about how they use history in their practice of medicine. Their stories of clinical experiences show that historical thinking can serve in the diagnosis and care of patients.These essays constitute new evidence for an old argument about the utility of history in medicine. They open an intimate window on how history informs and serves clinical practice and describe what life is like for doctors when they leave the history meetings and go back to the wards.The contributors to this volume hail from five countries and represent sixty years of training; the most senior completed medical school in 1943, the youngest in 2003. They include several internists, four pediatricians, two psychiatrists, two infectious disease specialists, one neurologist, one emergentologist, and one surgeon. Topics include: history in the service of patients, the doctor-patient relationship, disease causation, administrative dilemmas, and the use of history to reflect on current trends in the practice of medicine.Many books make claims for the value of teaching history to future physicians, but none have explored the clinical experience of those doctors who are experts in history. Clio in the Clinic shows how knowledge of history can shape a physician's view of the profession and how it can be a surprising asset at the bedside for diagnosis and treatment. Not all the endings are happy, but these tales of medical life are written with insight, honesty, humour, and great affection for medicine, its history, and its people.

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For two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world. The physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin presents a global history of the virus, with a focus on Canada.Duffin describes the frightening appearance of the virus and its identification by scientists in China; subsequent outbreaks on cruise ships; the relentless spread to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere; and the immediate attempts to confront it. COVID-19 next explores the scientific history of infections generally, and the discovery of coronaviruses in particular. Taking a broad approach, the book explains the advent of tests, treatments, and vaccines, as well as the practical politics behind interventions, including quarantines, barrier technologies, lockdowns, and social and financial supports. In concluding chapters Duffin analyzes the outcome of successive waves of COVID-19 infection around the world: the toll of human suffering, the successes and failures of control measures, vaccine rollouts, and grassroots opposition to governments’ attempts to limit the spread and mitigate social and economic damages.Closing with the fraught search for the origins of COVID-19, Duffin considers the implications of an “infodemic” and provides an cautionary outlook for the future.

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Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) is best known for his invention of the stethoscope, one of medicine's most powerful symbols. Histories, novels, and films have cloaked his life in hagiography and legend. Jacalyn Duffin's fascinating new biography relies on a vastly expanded foundation of primary source material, including thousands of pages of handwritten patient records, lecture notes, unpublished essays, and letters. She situates Laennec, the scientist and teacher, within the broader social and intellectual currents of post-Revolutionary France. Her work uncovers a complex character who participated actively in the dramatic changes of his time. Laennec's famous Treatise on Mediate Auscultation was his only published book, but two lesser known works were left in manuscript: an early treatise on pathological anatomy and a later set of lectures on disease. The three parts of Duffin's biography correspond to these books. First, she examines Laennec's student research on the emerging science of pathological anatomy, the background for his major achievement. Second, she uses his clinical records to trace the discovery and development of "mediate auscultation" (listening through an instrument, or mediator, to sounds within the human body). The stethoscope allowed clinicians to "see" the organic alterations inside their living patients' bodies. Finally, she explores the impact of auscultation on diagnostic practice and on concepts of disease. Analyzed here for the first time in their entirety, Laennec's College de France lectures reveal his criticism of over-enthusiastic extrapolations of his own method at the expense of the patient's story. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Jacalyn Duffin's History of Medicine is one of the leading texts used to teach the history of the medical profession. Emphasizing broad concepts rather than names and dates, it has also been widely appreciated by general readers for more than twenty years. Based on sound scholarship and meticulous research, History of Medicine incorporates pithy examples from a range of periods and places and is infused with the author’s characteristic wit. The third edition has been completely revised to highlight new scholarship on the past and incorporate significant medical events of the most recent decade – including new technologies, drug shortages, medical assistance in dying, and recent outbreaks of infectious diseases such as Ebola, H1N1, Zika, and COVID-19. The book is organized around themes of scientific and clinical interest, such as anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, surgery, obstetrics, medical education, health-care delivery, and public health. It includes a chapter on how to approach research in medical history, updated with new resources. History of Medicine is sensitive to the power of historical research to inform current health-care practice and enhance cultural understanding.

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An analysis of the 2003 SARS outbreak by physicians involved in the crisis, historians, and policy experts.

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