Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease

By Jeremy A. Greene

Book Overview

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a new model of chronic disease - diagnosed on the basis of numerical deviations rather than symptoms and treated on a preventive basis before any overt signs of illness develop - that arose in concert with a set of safe, effective, and highly marketable prescription drugs. In Prescribing by Numbers, physician-historian Jeremy A. Greene examines the mechanisms by which drugs and chronic disease categories define one another within medical research, clinical practice, and pharmaceutical marketing, and he explores how this interaction has profoundly altered the experience, politics, ethics, and economy of health in late-twentieth-century America. Prescribing by Numbers highlights the complex historical role of pharmaceuticals in the transformation of disease categories.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801884772
• ISBN13: 9780801884771
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher