Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century

In this wide ranging survey W.F. Bynum examines the parallel development of biomedical sciences (such as physiology pathology bacteriology and immunology) and of clinical practice and preventive medicine in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. By examining the contributions of key individuals such as Louis Pasteur R.T.H. Laennec Claude Bernard Edwin Chadwick and Rudolf Virchow and important institutions Professor Bynum shows how science played a vital role in transforming medical education and medical care and how the medical profession ultimately benefited from the public visibility of medical science in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Historians sociologists and health professionals should find much of interest in this book.