Medical History II: Medicine is an enormous achievement, but what it will achieve practically for humanity, and what those who hold the power will allow it to do, remain open questions

“The Greatest Benefit to Mankind – A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present” by Roy Porter was published in 1999. It’s a magnificent 848-page book that I am working my way through. Many people, I’ve discovered, own a copy but have not read it. I hope that I might do medical history, the world at large, students of medicine (surely all of us), and Roy a service by posting extracts of his book on my website. ‘The art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician,’ wrote Hippocrates. Even in Greek times opinions about medicine were mixed; the word pharmakos meant both remedy and poison – ‘kill’ and ‘cure’ were apparently indistinguishable. That double idea – death and the doctors riding together – has loomed large in history. Medicine is an enormous achievement, but what it will achieve practically for humanity, and what those who hold the power will allow it to do, remain open questions. The emergence of this high-tech scientific medicine may be a prime…