This is an illustrated dictionary of terms, people, events, and dates spanning the entire history of medicine, totalling some 700 double-column pages with a large number of rare and exceptional illustrations from many original sources compiled over years of inquiry involving more than 5,000 books and hundreds of journals. It is a major resource of hard-to-find information about notable medical figures, instruments, conditions, procedures, and dates and a storehouse of anecdotes and background material.

This Companion is the first comprehensive work of reference surveying all aspects of medical history. Some 70 experts have contributed substantial and original essays covering areas such as the historical epidemiology of diseases, the rise of medical science, the medical profession and its institutions, and the impact of medicine upon populations, economic development, culture, religion and thought. It also considers the relations between health, medicine, society, and the state. While the emphasis often falls upon Western medicine, other traditions are generously represented. The 72 Essays in theCompanionare organized into seven parts: The Place of Medicine; Body Systems; Theories of Life, Health, and Disease; Understanding Disease; Clinical Medicine; Medicine in Society; Medicine, Ideas and Culture. An exhaustive index, cross-referencing and bibliographic notes for each article will make this readable work an essential tool for students of medical history and a valuable addition to any medical library.

Combining recent medical discoveries with historical and geographical scholarship, this is the most comprehensive history of human disease since August Hirsch's monumental Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology in 1880. Accessible to laypeople and specialists alike, The Cambridge World History of Human Disease explores the patterns of disease throughout the world as well as the variety of approaches that different medical traditions have used to fight it. The volume traces the concept of disease as medicine developed from an art to a science, then addresses the history of disease in each major world region. The final and largest part offers the history and geography of each significant human disease - both historical and contemporary - from AIDS to yellow fever. A truly interdisciplinary history, it includes contributions from over 160 medical and social scientists from across the globe. Together with The Cambridge World History of Food (2000), The Cambridge World History of Human Disease provides an extraordinary glimpse of what is known about human health as the twenty-first century begins.