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by: Lynn Payer  List Price: $16.00 Amazon.com's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 610.94 EAN: 9780805048032 ISBN: 0805048030 Label: Holt Paperbacks Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 208 Publication Date: November 15, 1996 Publisher: Holt Paperbacks Studio: Holt Paperbacks Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: A classic comparative study of medicine and national culture, Medicine and Culture shows us that while doctors regard themselves as servants of science, they are often prisoners of custom. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - A classic text in medicine and cultureThis is a well written text that is unusual in that it applies the anthropological methods we often see applied to developing countries to developed countries. This is very much a personal but well informed view of this area and it is an interesting read. The only criticism I would make is that this and other such texts occasionally verge into minimizing the effects of individual differences and demographic characteristics in health beliefs and action in favor of "cultural" explanations. Who we ... Read More Rating:  - A fascinating anthropology of European and American medicineWhile we may be used to looking at the anthropology of less developed countries, Lynn Payer turns her lens at European and American medicine. In England one keeps a stiff upper lip, as doctors give fewer tests, less medicine and lower doses, even when not rationed. West Germans use six times the number of heart drugs as the French or English, although the three countries have similar rates of heart disease, often using several at once due to the attitudes towards the heart. France looks more at ... Read More Rating: - The spirit of medicine comes from cultureIn Medicine and Culture, Payer describes what she sees as the spirit of the medical system in France, Germany, England, and the US. I say spirit, because she writes about the feel she got for the medical system in each while doing business and living abroad. She doesn't detail how the medicine is financed and regulated, and statistics are presented sparsely to illustrate points, and not flung at the reader. She is very much writing about the feel of medicine and how it interacts with culture in ... Read More Rating: - There will not be a new edition...Readers of this excellent book will wait in vain for an update as some reviewers have requested -- Lynn Payer died of breast cancer on September 22, 2001. So this will be it -- the insights she brings to the comparative study of health systems are thus all the more precious. I've lived in two of the countries she studied (UK and US) and been treated in a third (France) and the book rings true. An excellent addition to the library of anyone wishing to understand the strengths and the flaws of our ... Read More Rating: - a real eye-openerWritten from the point of view of a journalist and not a social scientist, this book is nevertheless a must read for readers interested in medicine, culture, and sociology of science. If you are one of those persons who thinks medicine is a science, I think this book will make a very surprising read. In particular, if you like the epistemological side of scientific inquiry, you could try to extend many of the discussions of the book to other practices Read More 
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