Читать онлайн «The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity»

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1997

Copyright © Roy Porter 1997

Roy Porter has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006374541

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007385546

Version: 2017-02-09

Some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.

More from the reviews:

‘An endlessly beguiling grand tour d’horizon… Nobody could do this colossal subject better justice than Professor Porter. ’

MICHAEL BYWATER, New Statesman

‘History as compulsive as this is a splendid reminder of the essential truth [of mortality]… an admirable and a richly enjoyable book’

New Scientist

‘What? Yet another compulsively readable, astonishingly encyclopaedic book from Roy Porter? The Greatest Benefit to Mankind might be his best to date: an epic, one-volume narrative history of man’s struggle with the infirmities of his body, from Aesculapius to AIDS. The author’s perceptiveness is, as usual, scalpel-sharp; his manner genially bedside; his erudition invigorating. To get the full benefit of Dr Porter’s tonic, take a dose of the book at least once a day and retire early to bed.

SIMON SCHAMA

‘Riveting … one of the abiding impressions left by this astonishingly erudite historical survey is of the enormous intellectual effort across all cultures to try and understand the origins of illness. Another is what perilous lives we have led, especially since we created cities to live in. There is prodigious labour here, as well as generous helpings of wit… This fine book is much more than a chronicle of the rise of modern medical science. It is also a splendidly salutary reminder of the precariousness and pain of the human lot through most of our history. After reading it, anyone who has ever attended a birth, overcome an infection by taking a pill or had a pain-free operation, should be left profoundly grateful to be living in the second half of the 20th century, rather than any of the centuries before. ’