Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > American History > Item 242
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Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine)
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by Robert A. Aronowitz
Sales Rank: 207883
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List Price: $30.00
$19.80
At Amazon
on 8-8-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 378 pages
Published by: Cambridge University PressEdition: 1st Edition October 8, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0521822491
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0521822497
Book Dimensions:
9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
Weighs: 1.5 pounds
Product Review
"Providing extensive research and case histories, including that of author and environmentalist Rachel Carson, Aronowitz presents his findings here to a national audience."
- Library Journal
"From the perspective of a physician who is also a trained historian and social scientist, and a gifted narrator, Robert Aronowitz has written an illuminating and moving account of what has, and has not changed in the knowledge and understanding of breast cancer, its diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and prevention, and in its lived experience in American society over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing principally on rich case studies of women with breast cancer, and the clinical records and correspondence of physicians who have been pathmakers in this field of medicine, he vividly demonstrates the entwined influence of scientific, technological, social, and cultural factors on this history. He does it in a way that not only provides first-hand insights into the attitudes and values of patients afflicted with breast cancer, their suffering and decision-making, but of their doctors and families as well."
- Renée C. Fox, PhD, Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
"A fascinating and thought-provoking study of the clinical experience of breast cancer patients and their physicians. Through an imaginative reconstruction of that experience, Aronowitz shows how culture -- in terms of values and medical ideas and practices -- has changed over the past two centuries, while shaping the perceived choices of both doctor and patient. The author wants us to think critically and circumstantially about how we evaluate risk and he succeeds admirably; this is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of medicine past and present."
- Charles Rosenberg
"Fear, risk, and the biology of disease are all critical actors in Robert Aronowitz's path breaking new assessment of breast cancer in American society, Unnatural History. He brilliantly demonstrates how the experience of disease cannot be "resected" from time, place, and culture. Patients, clinicians, and historians will greatly benefit from his insight and compassion."
- Allan M. Brandt, Kass Professor of the History of Medicine, Harvard University
"The evolution of medicine's understanding of the biology and natural history of breast cancer as well as societal attitudes toward its detection, prevention, and treatment is a fascinating story. Dr. Aronowitz's erudite and relatively unapologetic and honest account of how 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' offers a sobering testament of how this story has unfolded over the past 2 centuries. It reflects the frustration of trying to drive at night without headlights (i.e., managing breast cancer in the 1800s, without sufficient understanding of the biology of the disease), and the delicate dance between physician and patient with respect to managing this disease during a time of growing, but often conflicting data.
Both those involved in the care of breast cancer patients, and patients and their families should find the journey that Dr. Aronowitz's book takes them on to be most illuminating."
- Andrew D. Seidman, MD, Attending Physician, Breast Cancer Medicine Service Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
"Dr. Aronowitz has written a compelling and rich history, so much so that a review can barely skim the highlights. In addition, he wants us to think critically about risk evaluation. Aronowitz hopes that knowledge of this history will help clinicians and patients respond more thoughtfully to the challenges presented by the many options we have for confronting breast cancer."
- Shelf Awareness, Marilyn Dahl
"In his new book, Unnatural History, Robert Aronowitz, a clinician and historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania looks at how breast cancer was understood and experienced in the USA from the early 19th century to the present." -Alison Bateman-House, Lancet Oncology
Product Description
In the early nineteenth century in the United States, cancer in the breast was a rare disease. Now it seems that breast cancer is everywhere. Written by a medical historian who is also a doctor, Unnatural History tells how and why this happened. Rather than there simply being more disease, breast cancer has entered the bodies of so many American women and the concerns of nearly all the rest, mostly as a result of how we have detected, labeled, and responded to the disease. The book traces changing definitions and understandings of breast cancer, the experience of breast cancer sufferers, clinical and public health practices, and individual and societal fears.
Reader Reviews
This is a moving and thoughtful book that packs a lot into relatively few pages. It has haunted me for months since I read it. It is a nuanced, non-polemical account of the hidden dialectic (hidden, at least, to us laymen) between surgeons and internists, family physicians and researchers, counselors and advocates, about what cancer means and how to respond to it. Aronowitz moves skillfully back and forth between broad-stroke history of medical technology and the famous researchers of the past 200 years, and the intimate details of individual patients and their physicians and loved ones, gleaned from journals, correspondence, and medical records. It's not for the faint of heart: Some of the basic themes of the book are profoundly depressing. Aronowitz shows that there was essentially no change in age-adjusted breast cancer mortality in the 200 years between 1800 and 2000, and that most of the apparent improvements in outcomes related to defining more conditions as "cancer" that were less likely to result in death, and treating them aggressively. He also carefully disects the ways in which physicians treating breast cancer cope with the essential hopelessness of much of what they do, including lots of subtle, well-meaning, and even unintended deception of their patients, and finding myriad ways to define "success" that do not depend on prolonging a patient's life or improving its quality. He carefully attends to the interplay of hope, pain, and spiritual fulfillment in the face of death. And he casts a cold light of analysis on many popular ideas about detection and treatment. But he is sympathetic and compassionate towards all, doctors and patients. Most of all, patients.
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Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine)
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Price: $19.80
Updated on 8-8-2008.
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