This is a collection of stories about Western medicine from antiquity to the modern era. Writing as both a physician and an author, the author weaves scattered medical anecdotes from historical records, notes, and periodicals into more than thirty thematic chapters: from itinerant quacks peddling cure-alls, pharmacists, and the rise and fall of patent medicines to the fortunes of female practitioners, charlatans, and swindlers; from soothsayers, ghost witchcraft, and medical superstition to doctors' dress and manner, fees for house calls, and tales of stinginess or generosity; from absurd prescriptions and bloodletting to the varied figures found in hospitals and field hospitals, including doctors who loved wine, doctors who also wrote poetry and music, and all manner of impostors. Readers will find both the absurdity and comedy of medical trickery and the difficulty with which generations of physicians groped forward amid ignorance and prejudice: remedies of the time were often more dangerous than the disease, and it is precisely these failures and jokes that accumulated into the path of modern medicine. Amid the humor the author remains fair, satirizing medical folly while holding in respect the physicians who dedicated themselves to the field, preserving a sober attitude toward life and the profession within a light and witty narrative. For readers who wish to bypass dry chronicles and enter Western medical history through people and anecdotes, this is a book to dip into at leisure and a gateway to the subject.
Founded in 1988 and affiliated with China CITIC Group, CITIC Press focuses on business and economics, social sciences, literature and children's books, with common categories covering social sciences, finance, literature, Eastern philosophy and literary appreciation. Its library holds 91 titles, including Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens trilogy, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Wu Xiaobo's Thirty Years of Strife: Chinese Enterprises 1978–2008, Nelly Sachs's The Weight of Butterflies: Selected Poems of Nelly Sachs, as well as New Interpretations of the Analects and Chiang Hsun's lectures on Dream of the Red Chamber. Its authors and translators include Lin Junhong, Ba Shusong, Chen Li and Chang Fen-ling. Overall, the press introduces influential works in finance and social sciences while balancing classic translation and local appreciation in literature and Eastern philosophy, combining academic depth with accessible reading.
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