Christopher Lawrence

George Weisz

This book sheds new light on orthodox medicine and medical science in the interwar years. It challenges the accepted story that medicine in the twentieth century was subject to creasing reductionism and shows instead that there was a holistic turn in the medical sciences and clinical practice that challenged reductionism and medical specialization.

Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950

Greater Than the Parts

George Weisz offers a comprehensive analysis of the French university system during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Examining the major reforms of higher education undertaken during the Third Republic, he argues that the original thrust for reform came from within the educational system, especially from an academic profession seeking to raise its occupational status. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Emergence of Modern Universities In France, 1863-1914

This wide-ranging book is the first to examine one of the most significant and characteristic features of modern medicine - specialization - in historical and comparative context. Based on research in three languages, it traces the origins of modern medical specialization to 1830s Paris and examines its spread to Germany, Britain, and the US, showing how it evolved from an outgrowth of academic teaching and research in the 19th century into the dominant mode of medical practice by the middle of the 20th. Taking account of the parallels and differences in national developments, the book shows the international links among the nations' medical systems as well as the independent influences of local political and social conditions in the move toward specialization. An epilogue takes the story up to the twenty-first century, where problems of specialization merge into the larger crisis of health care which affects most western nations today.

A Comparative History of Medical Specialization

Divide and Conquer

Professor of the History of Medicine George Weisz

This wide-ranging and imaginative book examines the social and scientific role of the French Academy of Medicine from its creation in 1820 to the outbreak of the Second World War. The first chapters focus on the institution and its activities, including the evaluation of medical innovations and the cultivation of professional memory through eulogies and institutional art. Weisz argues that the Academy was gradually transformed from a low-status public institution that was central to French medical science in the nineteenth century to an establishment institution largely irrelevant to medical science but playing a key role in public health policy. The second half of the book uses the activities and literary productions of the Academy to explore broader issues of medical history. The Academy's role in the regulation and scientific study of mineral waters illuminates processes of discipline formation in medical science and explores the therapeutic specificity of French medicine. Academic debates are used to investigate the appropriation of new research techniques like animal experimentation and quantification in therapeutic reasoning. Academic eulogies provide a starting point for the evolving medical and scientific reputation of Laennec, the inventor of ausculation, Using techniques of prosopography applied to the membership of the Academy, Weisz goes on to analyze the role of the Parisian medical elite in French medicine and its social place within the French bourgeoisie. His concluding chapter examines the emerging self-images of this Parisian elite in academic eulogies.

The French Academy of Medicine in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

The Medical Mandarins

Gerard Jorland

Annick Opinel

Fondation Marcel Mérieux

How quantification arrived at its current dominant position in health care."

Medical Quantification in Historical and Sociological Perspectives//Perspectives Historiques Et Sociologiques Sur la Quantification Médicale

Body Counts

Professor of Social Studies of Medicine George Weisz

Examines one of the most significant and characteristic features of modern medicine - specialization - in historical and comparative context. This title traces the origins of modern medical specialization to 1830s Paris and examines its spread to Germany, Britain, and the US.

Long and recurring illnesses have burdened sick people and their doctors since ancient times, but until recently the concept of "chronic disease" had limited significance. Even lingering diseases like tuberculosis, a leading cause of mortality, did not inspire dedicated public health activities until the later decades of the nineteenth century, when it became understood as a treatable infectious disease. Historian of medicine George Weisz analyzes why the idea of chronic disease assumed critical importance in the twentieth century and how it acquired new meaning as one of the most serious problems facing national healthcare systems. Chronic Disease in the Twentieth Century challenges the conventional wisdom that the concept of chronic disease emerged because medicine's ability to cure infectious disease led to changing patterns of disease. Instead, it suggests, the concept was constructed and has evolved to serve a variety of political and social purposes. How and why the concept developed differently in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France are central concerns of this work. In the United States, anxiety about chronic disease spread early in the twentieth century and was transformed in the 1950s and 1960s into a national crisis that helped shape healthcare reform. In the United Kingdom, the concept emerged only after World War II, was associated almost exclusively with proper medical care for the elderly population, and became closely linked to the development of geriatrics as a specialty. In France, the problems of elderly and infirm people were handled as technical and administrative matters until the 1950s and 1960s, when medical treatment of elderly people emerged as a subset of their wider social marginality. While an international consensus now exists regarding a chronic disease crisis that demands better forms of disease management, the different paths taken by these countries during the twentieth century continue to exert profound influence. This book seeks to explain why, among the innumerable problems faced by societies, some problems in some places become viewed as critical public issues that shape health policy.

George Weisz

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