Paul Unschuld's new book What is Medicine?

[Guest guest]

I received an announcement from the University of California Press that,

What Is Medicine? Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing

by Paul U. Unschuld

will be available in September 2009.

I thought that members of this group might be interested in this topic.

 

The book is available from

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11250.php

 

The blurb is:

" What Is Medicine? is the first comparative history of two millennia of

Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries BCE

through present advances in sciences like molecular biology and in

Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. "

 

256 pages, 6 x 9 " , 4 b/w photographs

cloth 978-0-520-25765-8 $60.00 Buy Now

paper 978-0-520-25766-5 $24.95 Buy Now

 

" What Is Medicine? Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing is the

first comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese

medicine from their beginnings in the centuries BCE through present

advances in sciences like molecular biology and in Western adaptations

of traditional Chinese medicine. In his revolutionary interpretation of

the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, Paul U.

Unschuld relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to

changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on

his own extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as his and

others' scholarship in European medical history, Unschuld argues against

any claims of " truth " in former and current, Eastern and Western models

of physiology and pathology. What Is Medicine? makes an eloquent and

timely contribution to discussions on health care policies while

illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and it

stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in

medicine's attempts to manage the human organism. "

 

Wendy