Langstaff: A Nineteenth-Century Medical Life

Rating:
Summary: Medicine + history = thoughtful entertainment
Review: I really enjoyed this volume, but you won't if you're not fond of the academic history stlye. There are charts, and frequently the text is a detailed discussion of the charts, but if you can work through/skip over those parts this is a worthwhile read.

Through one non-urban, but not-exactly-rural doctor's life Duffin gets at the development of medicine and thoughts about disease in a "normal" community. You get to see a doctor get educated, to watch cutting-edge science trickle down to the local level, and to see what keeps a small-town doctor financially afloat when medical bills weren't as weighty as they are today.

What you won't get is intimately involved with the good doctor Langstaff. This isn't the volume for character psychology--it's about medicine, education, and science.