The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine

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JHU Press, Nov 2, 2006 - History - 560 pages

Preeminent historian of medicine Owsei Temkin brought to his writing an awesome range of scholarship, for he was at home in the classical, the medieval, and the modern eras. The essays gathered in this volume deal with all the topics that Temkin considered most important in his work. They were widely commended for their originality, intelligent analysis, and impressive continuity of thought.

Temkin explores the history of basic medical sciences, of health and disease, and of surgery and drug therapy, as well as general questions concerning the historical and philosophical approach to medicine from antiquity to the early twentieth century. In a retrospective introduction which gives the book its name, Temkin relates his writings to his career as a scholar in Germany and the United States. He situates the writings against the background of the development of the study of medical history and provides recollections of such prominent figures as Karl Sudhoff, Henry E. Sigerist, William H. Welch, and Richard H. Shryock.

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Contents

V
25
The Meaning of Medicine in Historical Perspective
41
Medicine and the Problem of Moral Responsibility 50 5889
50
An Essay on the Usefulness of Medical History for Medicine
68
On the Interrelationship of the History and the Philosophy
101
The Historiography of Ideas in Medicine
110
Comparative Study in the History of Medicine
126
Greek Medicine as Science and Craft
137
Vesalius on an Immanent Biological Motor Force
287
The Classical Roots of Glissons Doctrine of Irritation
290
The Philosophical Background of Magendies Physiology
317
Materialism in French and German Physiology of the Early Nineteenth Century
340
Basic Science Medicine and the Romantic Era The Fielding H Garrison Lecture
345
German Concepts of Ontogeny and History around 1800
373
The Idea of Descent in PostRomantic German Biology 1848
390
VI
397

On Galens Pneumatology
154
A Galenic Model for Quantitative Physiological Reasoning?
162
Studies on Late Alexandrian Medicine I Alexandrian
178
The Byzantine Origin of the Names for the Basilic
198
IV
206
RENAISSANCE TO TWENTIETH CENTURY
223
Zimmermanns Philosophy of the Physician
239
Wunderlich Schelling and the History of Medicine
246
The European Background of the Young Dr Welch
252
The Era of Paul Ehrlich
261
BASIC MEDICAL SCIENCES AND BIOLOGY
269
Metaphors of Human Biology
271
Was Servetus Influenced by Ibn anNafis?
284
HEALTH AND DISEASE
417
Health and Disease
419
Specific Entity and Individual Sickness
441
An Historical Analysis of the Concept of Infection
456
On the History of Morality and Syphilis
472
SURGERY AND DRUG THERAPY
485
The Role of Surgery in the Rise of Modern Medical Thought
487
The Early History of Experimental Pylorectomy
497
A Postscript to Merrems Youthful Dream
510
Fernel Joubert and Erastus on the Specificity of Cathartic Drugs
512
Therapeutic Trends and the Treatment of Syphilis before 1900
518
Index
525
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About the author (2006)

Owsei Temkin, M.D. (1902–2002), was William H. Welch Professor of the History of Medicine and director of the Institute of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. His books include The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology, Soranus' Gynecology (translation), and Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians.

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