The Cambridge History of Medicine

This volume bears the unmistakably erudite stamp of its editor, who sadly died in 2002. It begins with a statement that some would find contentious, namely that 'never have people in the West lived so long or been so healthy'. Living a long time is not the same as being healthy, but then the scare over increased obesity rates has occurred since the editor's death. Porter himself contributes four of the articles -- on disease, medical science, hospitals and surgery and mental illness -- while others look at the history of disease, the rise of medicine, and the relationship of medicine to society and the state. There are two afterwords by Geoff Watts, one of which was written 10 years ago. At the end there is a very useful chronology, a list of major human diseases and an extensive bibliography. Watts' pieces are of special interest as well-informed commentary on the medical scene as a whole. In his most recent contribution, he reflects that two things have not changed over the past decade, namely 'medicine's capacity to devise new and more costly remedies and the uncertainty with which so many of us view the entire enterprise.' This is a particular instance of the more general unease about the direction of science and technology as a whole. There can be no better history of medicine in under 400 pages.