British ed. published with subtitle: A medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present. Includes bibliographical references (pages 719-764) and index.

The roots of medicine -- Antiquity -- Medicine and faith -- The medieval west -- Indian medicine -- Chinese medicine -- Renaissance -- The new science -- Enlightenment -- Scientific medicine in the nineteenth century -- Nineteenth-century medical care -- Public medicine -- From Pasteur to penicillin -- Tropical medicine, world diseases -- Psychiatry -- Medical research -- Clinical science -- Surgery -- Medicine, state and society -- Medicine and the people -- The past, the present and the future. "Roy Porter explores medicine's evolution against the backdrop of the wider religious, scientific, philosophical, and political beliefs of the culture in which it develops, and he shows how our need to understand where diseases come from and what we can do to control them has -- perhaps above all else -- inspired developments in medicine through the ages. He charts the remarkable rise of modern medical science -- the emergence of specialties such as anatomy, physiology, neurology, and bacteriology -- as well as the accompanying development of wider medical practice at the bedside, in the hospital, and in the ambitious public health systems of the twentieth century. Along the way the book offers up a treasure trove of historical surprises: how the ancient Egyptians treated incipient baldness with a mixture of hippopotamus, lion, crocodile, goose, snake, and ibex fat; how a mystery epidemic devastated ancient Athens and brought an end to the domination of that great city: how lemons did as much as Nelson to defeat Napoleon: how yellow fever, carried by African mosquitoes to the Americas, led the French to fail utterly in their attempts to recover Haiti after the slave revolt of 1790: and how the explorers of the South Seas brought both syphilis to Tahiti and tuberculosis and measles to the Maoris." --