Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine surveys the rise of medicine in the West from classical times to the present. Covering both the social and scientific history of medicine, this lavishly illustrated volume traces the chronology of key developments and events, while at the same time engaging with the issues, discoveries, and controversies that have beset and characterized medical progress. The authors weave a narrative that connects disease, doctors, primary care, surgery, the rise of hospitals, drug treatment and pharmacology, mental illness and psychiatry. This volume emphasizes the crucial developments of the past 150 years, but also examines classical, medieval, and Islamic and East Asian medicine. Authoritative and accessible, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine is for readers wanting a lively and informative introduction to medical history. Roy Porter is professor of the social history of medicine at the Wellcome Insitute for the History of Science. He has written or edited numerous books about the history of medicine, including Western Medical Tradition (with L. Conrad, Cambridge, 1995), Drugs and Narcotics in History (with M. Teich, Cambridge, 1995), The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (Norton, 1999), and The Creation of the Modern World (Norton, 2000). "This distinguished book should be shared with students and colleagues and just enjoyed by its owner." The New England Journal of Medicine "This book provides a comprehensive, authoritative presentation of the development of Western medical practice to the present day...The book is filled with vivid illustrations...The information presented is accurate, and the scope of the book is vast...I recommend this volume highly." SB&F "We have come to expect from the Cambridge Illustrated History series informative and elegantly produced volumes, and this one on the history of medicine lives up to expectations....What particularly distinguishes this book are its illustrations and their captions. They are exceedingly well chosen and reproduced....a handsome volume...." Isis An authoritative and accessible illustrated introduction to medical history. Roy Porter is Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, and has taught previously at the University of Cambridge and at UCLA. Among his many influential books in the field are Mind Forg'd Manacles: Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency; A Social History of Madness; Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660–1850; Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late Enlightenment England; London: A Social History; and (co-authored with Dorothy Porter) In Sickness and in Health: the British Experience, 1650–1850 and Patient's Progress.