Rating: 
Summary: Excellent on details but understandably short on conclusion
Review: I found Mr. Porter's excellent history enlightening, and sufficiently engrossing so that I could recommend it even to my nonmedical friends. I enjoyed every chapter and feel that I gained a new perspective on my chosen profession. I don't feel that Mr. Porter completely answered my own most nagging question about what I do, namely, why do people who distrust me and other physicians (or, As Mr. Porter calls us, members of the medical-industrial complex) and yet believe everything alternative therapists tell them? He spoke about the cognitive aspects of this question, but not the emotional ones. Why, as an ER physician, do I hear "I hate doctors" as the introductory remark for a large percentage of my histories? People fear us and not their chiropractors. It is not just a consumer issue, aggravated by the profession's chronic obsession with paternalistic authority over 'the patient', nor is it due to higher expectations from privileged, well-educated and demanding clients. Mr. Porter's analysis was good, but does not address the gut-level fear of people facing the medical profession of today.
Rating: 
Summary: Detailed but uninspiring
Review: I had high hopes for this book, especially considering the favorable reviews, but I must confess that I found the book to be lacking in narrative flow and, sorry to say, boring. I was also mildly annoyed that the author labels most every doctor of discussion a 'polymath.'
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I started reading with great relish, looking forward to a well-written history of medicine. I got as far as page 34 before I concluded that this book was never going to live up to its promise and was, in fact, a Marxist polemic. The book does does say who Roy Porter is, but from the tone of the book it seems he is one of those trendy journalists (he surely cannot be a scientist) who detest Western values and particularly Western science.At page 34 readers are informed that "the rebirth of the underclass in the First World (results) from the free-market policies dominant since the 1980s, (has) assisted the resurgence of disease". Oh dear. This tosh merely reveals Porter's true colours and shows him to be be short on history but long on leftist cliches. And it goes downhill from there. Shortly after bad health in some of the third world are attributed to that great leftist bugaboo, colonialism. The fact that many dirt poor third world countires got that way through through the machinations of post-colonial home-grown dictators of a particularly vicious and evil kind seems to have entirely escaped Porter's attention. I then skimmed through the rest of the book and similiar throw-away and absurdly wrong opinions abound. Later on we are informed that "Synthetic food additives and dyes, fertilizers, and pesticides may all be carcinogenic".
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I started reading with great relish, looking forward to a well-written history of medicine. I got as far as page 34 before I concluded that this book was never going to live up to its promise and was, in fact, a Marxist polemic. The book does does say who Roy Porter is, but from the tone of the book it seems he is one of those trendy journalists (he surely cannot be a scientist) who detest Western values and particularly Western science. At page 34 readers are informed that "the rebirth of the underclass in the First World (results) from the free-market policies dominant since the 1980s, (has) assisted the resurgence of disease". Oh dear. This tosh merely reveals Porter's true colours and shows him to be be short on history but long on leftist cliches. And it goes downhill from there. Shortly after bad health in some of the third world are attributed to that great leftist bugaboo, colonialism. The fact that many dirt poor third world countires got that way through through the machinations of post-colonial home-grown dictators of a particularly vicious and evil kind seems to have entirely escaped Porter's attention. I then skimmed through the rest of the book and similiar throw-away and absurdly wrong opinions abound. Later on we are informed that "Synthetic food additives and dyes, fertilizers, and pesticides may all be carcinogenic".
Rating:
Summary: Pedestrian.
Review: The author writes as if he has been an employee of the Wellcomes -- the I.G. Farben of British medicine -- a lot too long. A history of the medical profession is not a history of humanity -- or solely of doctors! Limited in its perspective and unenlightened by contemporary approaches to history and historicism. Anecdotally entertaining -- and so is the average coffee-table book.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: The topic is too large and, by page 200, I found myself skimming large portions of the book. It is comprehensive - but a boring, uninspiring read.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: The topic is too large and, by page 200, I found myself skimming large portions of the book. It is comprehensive - but a boring, uninspiring read.
Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedic Survey of the History of Medicine
Review: There is a solid narrative history of the up to 1800 or so and then he gives extended essays on a variety of topics like surgery, tropical medicine or public medicine. One chapter each on ancient Asian and Islamic medicine. I wish he had fulled out his thesis that as medicne has gotten more successful, medical consumers have gotten more disatisfied with the limits of care.
Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedic Survey of the History of Medicine
Review: There is a solid narrative history of the up to 1800 or so and then he gives extended essays on a variety of topics like surgery, tropical medicine or public medicine. One chapter each on ancient Asian and Islamic medicine. I wish he had fulled out his thesis that as medicne has gotten more successful, medical consumers have gotten more disatisfied with the limits of care.
Rating: 
Summary: A landmark for historical writing
Review: This book delievers what it was written to deliever. It wasn't meant to be a brain candy, witty, clever, majestic, novel that makes the common person rush out to apply to medical school. It is going to seem "boring" if you don't want to LEARN about THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE. An excellent book preceding this to read would be "Guns, Germs, and Steel," by Jared Diamond to put things in a solid historical reality. This book is five stars, but be ready to engage yourself with the text, buy a highlighter if it helps you concentrate, go back to college, pretend you need to get an A in the History of Western Medicine, because you will have an A+ perspective on medicine if you keep the correct perspective regarding this book.
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