Preventive Strikes: Women, Precancer, and Prophylactic Surgery - Hardcover

Löwy, Ilana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080189364X ISBN 13: 9780801893643

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Winner, 2011 Best Book in the History of Medicine, European Association for the History of Medicine and Health

Modern scientific tools can identify a genetic predisposition to cancer before any disease is detectable. Some women will never develop breast or ovarian cancer, but they nevertheless must decide, as a result of genetic testing, whether to have their breasts and ovaries removed to avoid the possibility of disease. The striking contrast between the sophistication of diagnosis and the crudeness of preventive surgery forms the basis of historian Ilana Löwy’s important study.

Löwy traces the history of prophylactic amputations through a century of preventive treatment and back to a long tradition of surgical management of gynecological problems. In the early twentieth century, surgeons came to believe that removing precancerous lesions―a term difficult to define even today―averted the danger of malignancy. This practice, Löwy finds, later led to surgical interventions for women with a hereditary predisposition to cancer but no detectable disease.

Richly detailed stories of patients and surgeons in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom allow Löwy to compare the evolution of medical thought and practice―and personal choice―in these different cultures.

Preventive Strikes aims to improve our understanding of professional, social, and cultural responses to cancer in the twenty-first century and to inform our reflections about how values are incorporated into routine medical practices.Ilana Löwy

About this title

About the Author:

Ilana Löwy is a senior researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Science.

Review:

"Splendid... This is a major study for doctors and historians alike."

(Medical History)

"Elegantly captures the history of the medicine and the politics, showing how they are interlinked."

(Lancet)

"A riveting and tragic story."

(Iona Heath International Journal of Epidemiology)

"A valuable contribution to the historical scholarship on risk, surgery and cancer, and one can only wish that it will influence current discussions around the topic."

(Thomas Schlich Nuncius)

"Preventive Strikes, the work of a gifted scholar, is an ambitious contribution to cancer history."

(James S. Olson Social History of Medicine)

"Löwy makes very clear the price that patients continue to pay for medicine's ignorance of the lessons of its history. She has done us all a service."

(Iona Heath Social History of Medicine)

"Penetrating, witty... A major study for doctors and historians alike."

(Christopher Lawrence Medical History)

"Preventive Strikes: Women, Precancer, and Prophylactic Surgery elegantly captures the history of the medicine and the politics."

(Sander L. Gilman Lancet)

"This book deserves a broad audience beyond the historians of medicine and health policy to which it is most clearly addressed... The questions [Löwy] tackles are of considerable importance both to the history of twentieth-century medicine and to contemporary medical policy."

(Margaret Marsh American Historical Review)

"Clearly of relevance to scholars in a number of fields, certainly beyond that of medical history."

(Reviews in History)

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 080189364X
• ISBN 13: 9780801893643
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 344