The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century

2023-11-24 History

Author : Simone Guidi
Release : 2023-11-24
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 240/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century by : Simone Guidi

Download or read book The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century written by Simone Guidi. This book was released on 2023-11-24. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, functions of the living body, embryology, and the impact of quantified reasoning on the concepts of health and illness. With insights spanning from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, this book provides a wide-ranging overview of attempts to ‘quantify’ the human body at various points. Arguing that medicine and philosophy have been constantly in dialogue with each other, the authors discuss how this provided a strategic opportunity both for medical thought and philosophy to refine and further develop. Given today’s fascination with the quantification of the body, represented by the growing profusion of self-tracking devices logging one’s sleep, diet or mood, this collection offers an important and timely contribution to an emerging and interdisciplinary field of study.

Body Counts

2005 Electronic books

Author : Fondation Marcel Mérieux
Release : 2005
Genre : Electronic books
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 296/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Body Counts by : Fondation Marcel Mérieux

Download or read book Body Counts written by Fondation Marcel Mérieux. This book was released on 2005. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an invigorating comparative and interdisciplinary reconsideration of the role of different types of medical "counting," this wide-ranging bilingual volume takes us from the mortality tables of the eighteenth century to the movement for "evidence-based medicine" in our own day. Culled from the proceedings of "La quantification dans les sciences mdicales et de la sant: perspective historique" held at the Muse Claude-Bernard in France in 2002, Body Counts moves beyond the usual emphasis on public health and clinical medicine to include the central role of numbers in laboratory work and medical instrumentation. Body Counts provides an innovative, historical, and sociological account of the functions of quantification. Contributors include Luc Berlivet (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Alberto Cambrosio (McGill University), Sir Iain Chalmers (James Lind Library, Oxford), Nicholas Dodier (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Michael Donnelly (Bard College), Volker Hess (Humboldt-University), Peter Keating (University of Quebec at Montreal), Ann La Berge (Virginia Tech University), Ilana Lwy (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Harry M. Marks (Johns Hopkins University), Lion Murard (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Mark Parascandola (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland), Theodore M. Porter (University of California at Los Angeles), Andrea Rusnock (University of Rhode Island), Christiane Sinding (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), and Ulrich Trhler (Institut fr Geschichte der Medizin der Albert-Ludwigs-Universitt).

The Transparent Body

2011-05-01 Science

Author : Jose Van Dijck
Release : 2011-05-01
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 35X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Transparent Body by : Jose Van Dijck

Download or read book The Transparent Body written by Jose Van Dijck. This book was released on 2011-05-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the potent properties of X rays evoked in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain to the miniaturized surgical team of the classic science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, the possibility of peering into the inner reaches of the body has engaged the twentieth-century popular and scientific imagination. Drawing on examples that are international in scope, The Transparent Body examines the dissemination of medical images to a popular audience, advancing the argument that medical imaging technologies are the material embodiment of collective desires and fantasies--the most pervasive of which is the ideal of transparency itself. The Transparent Body traces the cultural context and wider social impact of such medical imaging practices as X ray and endoscopy, ultrasound imaging of fetuses, the filming and broadcasting of surgical operations, the creation of plastinated corpses for display as art objects, and the use of digitized cadavers in anatomical study. In the early twenty-first century, the interior of the body has become a pervasive cultural presence - as accessible to the public eye as to the physician's gaze. Jose van Dijck explores the multifaceted interactions between medical images and cultural ideologies that have brought about this situation. The Transparent Body unfolds the complexities involved in medical images and their making, illuminating their uses and meanings both within and outside of medicine. Van Dijck demonstrates the ways in which the ability to render the inner regions of the human body visible - and the proliferation of images of the body's interior in popular media - affect our view of corporeality and our understanding of health and disease. Written in an engaging style that brings thought-provoking cultural intersections vividly to life, The Transparent Body will be of special interest to those in media studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, medical humanities, and the history of medicine.

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The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century

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