Our Present Complaint: American Medicine, Then and Now

by Charles E. Rosenberg

Overview

Charles E. Rosenberg, one of the world's most influential historians of medicine, presents a fascinating analysis of the current tensions in American medicine.

Situating these tensions within their historical and social contexts, Rosenberg investigates the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its moral and intellectual responsibilities, and what prospective patients—all of us—expect from medicine and the medical profession. He explores the nature and definition of disease and how ideas of disease causation reflect social values and cultural negotiations. His analyses of alternative medicine and bioethics consider the historically specific ways in which we define and seek to control what is appropriately medical.

At a time when clinical care and biomedical research generate as much angst as they offer cures, this volume provides valuable insight into how the practice of medicine has evolved, where it is going, and how lessons from history can improve its prognosis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801887161
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/26/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Charles E. Rosenberg is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences and a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. He is the author of The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866; The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System; and No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The History of Our Present Complaint
2. The Tyranny of Diagnosis: Specific Entities and Individual Experience
3. Contested Boundaries: Psychiatry, Disease, and Diagnosis
4. Banishing Risk: Or, the More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same
5. Pathologies of Progress: The Idea of Civilization as Risk
6. The New Enchantment: Genetics, Medicine, and Society
7. Alternative to What? Complementary to Whom? On the Scientific Project in Medicine
8. Holism in Twentieth—Century Medicine: Always in Opposition
9. Mechanism and Morality: On Bioethics in Context
10. Anticipated Consequences: Historians, History, and Health Policy
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

Renée C. Fox

With penetrating intelligence and insight, Charles Rosenberg examines in these thematically interwoven essays the tenacious social and moral ideas and values that underlie biomedicine; the variety of contexts in which they have been historically expressed in American society; and their vital relationship to the scientific, technological, and structural changes that medicine and the delivery of care have undergone during the past two centuries.

— Renée C. Fox, Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Renée C. Fox

With penetrating intelligence and insight, Charles Rosenberg examines in these thematically interwoven essays the tenacious social and moral ideas and values that underlie biomedicine; the variety of contexts in which they have been historically expressed in American society; and their vital relationship to the scientific, technological, and structural changes that medicine and the delivery of care have undergone during the past two centuries.

David Mechanic

Rosenberg brilliantly elucidates the continuing dialectic between biomedical reductionism and medicine as a caring, applied science. Beautifully nuanced and illuminating the complexities of science, marketplace, and social policy, Our Present Complaint reaffirms the essential social role of medicine as it responds to changes in science and technology, values and expectations, business endeavors, and ethical concerns.

From the Publisher

Strikingly original. Rosenberg gains fresh insights by placing important, timely problems in a larger cultural and social context. A major contribution to the field of medical history.
—Alan Derickson, author of Health Security for All: Dreams of Universal Health Care in America

Rosenberg brilliantly elucidates the continuing dialectic between biomedical reductionism and medicine as a caring, applied science. Beautifully nuanced and illuminating the complexities of science, marketplace, and social policy, Our Present Complaint reaffirms the essential social role of medicine as it responds to changes in science and technology, values and expectations, business endeavors, and ethical concerns.
—David Mechanic, René Dubos University Professor of Behavioral Science, Rutgers University

With penetrating intelligence and insight, Charles Rosenberg examines in these thematically interwoven essays the tenacious social and moral ideas and values that underlie biomedicine; the variety of contexts in which they have been historically expressed in American society; and their vital relationship to the scientific, technological, and structural changes that medicine and the delivery of care have undergone during the past two centuries.
—Renée C. Fox , Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Exploring such topics as the history of diagnostic reasoning, the role of genetics, and the place of bioethics, Charles Rosenberg offers a historian's perspective on how society came to be in its current medical predicament. Deeply informed and informative, this work illustrates why Rosenberg is rightly regarded as the dean of American medical historians.
—Harvey V. Fineberg, President, Institute of Medicine

Harvey V. Fineberg

Exploring such topics as the history of diagnostic reasoning, the role of genetics, and the place of bioethics, Charles Rosenberg offers a historian's perspective on how society came to be in its current medical predicament. Deeply informed and informative, this work illustrates why Rosenberg is rightly regarded as the dean of American medical historians.

Alan Derickson

"Strikingly original. Rosenberg gains fresh insights by placing important, timely problems in a larger cultural and social context. A major contribution to the field of medical history."

Editorial Reviews

This collection of essays, drawing on Rosenberg's half-century career as one of our preeminent historians of medicine, will be well appreciated by fellow historians and their students, but it ought to be required reading for health care providers, payers, policy makers, and patients.

Journal of American History - Elizabeth Siegel Watkins

[Rosenberg] reminds us that the problems addressed by disciplines such as bioethics and interdisiplinary communities such as that of health policy are inevitably situated and configured by a broader context to which ethicists and policy makers would do well to pay attention.

Journal of the History of Medicine - Thomas S. Huddle

"Cogently written and well documented, the book will benefit medical practitioners, and will be especially useful to those who make medical policy. Highly recommended."

Choice

[Rosenberg] reminds us that the problems addressed by disciplines such as bioethics and interdisiplinary communities such as that of health policy are inevitably situated and configured by a broader context to which ethicists and policy makers would do well to pay attention.

— Thomas S. Huddle, M.D., Ph.D.

Journal of the History of Medicine

Our Present Complaint... is a timely book. It examines important concepts and history that people need to be aware of and think through if they seek to understand and address the many problems with the American medical system.

— Sharon A. Falkenheimer

Themelios

This collection of essays, drawing on Rosenberg's half-century career as one of our preeminent historians of medicine, will be well appreciated by fellow historians and their students, but it ought to be required reading for health care providers, payers, policy makers, and patients.

— Elizabeth Siegel Watkins

Journal of American History

"Our Present Complaint... is a timely book. It examines important concepts and history that people need to be aware of and think through if they seek to understand and address the many problems with the American medical system."

Themelios - Sharon A. Falkenheimer

Cogently written and well documented, the book will benefit medical practitioners, and will be especially useful to those who make medical policy. Highly recommended.
—Choice

This collection of essays, drawing on Rosenberg's half—century career as one of our preeminent historians of medicine, will be well appreciated by fellow historians and their students, but it ought to be required reading for health care providers, payers, policy makers, and patients.
—Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, Journal of American History

Our Present Complaint . . . is a timely book. It examines important concepts and history that people need to be aware of and think through if they seek to understand and address the many problems with the American medical system.
—Sharon A. Falkenheimer, Themelios

[Rosenberg] reminds us that the problems addressed by disciplines such as bioethics and interdisiplinary communities such as that of health policy are inevitably situated and configured by a broader context to which ethicists and policy makers would do well to pay attention.
—Thomas S. Huddle, M.D., Ph.D., Journal of the History of Medicine

From the Publisher