Trusting Doctors (ebook)

Argumento de Trusting Doctors (ebook)

"Imber offers a well-researched, insightful work on the role of trust in American medicine, and how social changes altered both doctors' and patients' understanding of the role of the physician from the late 19th century to the present. Imber's relentless focus on the issue of trust differentiates his work from other histories of medicine and doctoring in America. . . . Overall, this is an important book on medicine, doctor-patient relationships, and the historical progress of medical ethics."--A.W. Klink, Choice

"I learned a great deal from reading this book. . . . The book is exceedingly well documented, the notes are very illuminating, and I've already bought or downloaded a number of Imber's sources for further reading. Anyone interested in medical ethics, medical sociology, or the history of medicine will find this book a very worthwhile read."--Daniel P. Sulmasy, New Atlantis

"Jonathan Imber's Trusting Doctors is an important, interesting, and readable book. We all know that our modern doctors do not have the social aura they once did. Imber effectively tells us the eye-opening story of why that change has happened."--Daniel Callahan, cofounder of the Hastings Center

"Doctors and people who have no choice but to trust doctors--which means all of us--need to read this book. With both sympathy and uncompromising honesty, Jonathan Imber traces the frequently troubled history of a medical profession that needs to attend to its increasingly fragile moral authority."--Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of the journal First Things

"Trusting Doctors is a major book, a benchmark on medical morality and trust, and an exemplar of religion's impact on medicine."--Peter Conrad, Brandeis University

"This important book challenges many ideas that have long been taken for granted in medical sociology and the history of medicine: ideas about the work of bioethics and epidemiology, as well as the relation between religion and medicine."--Raymond G. De Vries, University of Michigan

"Trusting Doctors is an original and important analysis of the decline of doctors' moral authority and a subtle, sociologically informed critique of contemporary medical bioethics."--Robert Zussman, American Journal of Sociology

"Imber is at his best . . . when he presents his views on religion and the origins of American medical professionalism. With erudition, he draws on archival material drawn from the writings and preaching of American clergy in the 19th and early 20th centuries."--Joseph J. Fins, Journal of the American Medical Association

"Imber offers a thought-provoking entry into the history of bioethics, a history which continues to unfold."--Susan E. Lederer, Social History of Medicine

"Trusting Doctors can strongly be recommended as a reference text for all teachers in the sociology and bio ethical fields and should be referred to by those who determine and regularly change the content of Medical School teaching."--Sam Mellick, CBE, Supreme Court Library Review of Books0Preface: A Sociological Perspective xi
Introduction xvii

Part One: Religious Foundations of Trust in Medicine
Chapter 1: Protestantism, Piety, and Professionalism 3
Chapter 2: The Infl uence of Catholic Perspectives 22
Chapter 3: The Scientifi c Challenge to Faith 43
Chapter 4: Public Health, Public Trust, and the Professionalization of Medicine 65

Part Two: Beyond the Golden Age of Trust in Medicine
Chapter 5: The Growth of Popular Distrust in Medicine 107
Chapter 6: The Evolution of Bioethics 130
Chapter 7: Anxiety in the Age of Epidemiology 144
Chapter 8: Trust and Mortality 167

Acknowledgments 197
Appendix 1: Extant Addresses, Sermons, and Eulogies by Clergymen 201
Appendix 2: Philadelphia Medical Sermons 208
Appendix 3: Long Island College Hospital Commencements, 1860-1899 210
Notes 213
Index 265