Medical Advance, Public Health and Social Evolution

Book excerpt: Medical Advance, Public Health and Social Evolution is an attempt to relate medical progress to the intellectual climate of the various broad periods of history, and to the social changes which took place in those periods and which influenced—and were influenced by—medical progress. Since the intellectual developments and historical events which have impinged upon medical progress have occurred in the setting of history, it has therefore been convenient to divide the book into chapters with a historical basis. The book begins with discussions of Greek and Roman life and medicine; Indian and Persian life and medicine; the Middle Ages; and the Renaissance and the resuscitation of science; and the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Separate chapters then deal with the development of hygiene; the bacteriological era; bacteriological control of food and water; and disease transmission by arthropods. Subsequent chapters cover drugs, antibiotics, hormones, and anesthetics; occupational medicine; degenerative diseases, cancer, radiology, and medical genetics; psychological medicine; and statistical methods and experiments on man and animals.