Medicine, Magic and Religion

W. H. R. Rivers

ISBN 10: 0415254035 / ISBN 13: 9780415254038

Published by Routledge 2001-05-17, 2001

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-TNFPD-9780415254038

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Medicine, Magic and Religion
• Publisher: Routledge 2001-05-17
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415254035
• ISBN 13: 9780415254038
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

One of the most fascinating men of his generation, W.H.R. Rivers was a British doctor and psychiatrist as well as a leading ethnologist. Immortalized as the hero of Pat Barker's award-winning Regeneration trilogy, Rivers was the clinician who, in the First World War, cared for the poet Siegfried Sassoon and other infantry officers injured on the western front. His researches into the borders of psychiatry, medicine and religion made him a prominent member of the British intelligentsia of the time, a friend of H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. Part of his appeal lay in an extraordinary intellect, mixed with a very real interest in his fellow man. Medicine, Magic and Religion is a prime example of this. A social institution, it is one of Rivers' finest works. In it, Rivers introduced the then revolutionary idea that indigenous practices are indeed rational, when viewed in terms of religious beliefs.

About the Author

W.H.R. Rivers (1864-1922) was a pioneer in the fields of neurology, psychology and anthropology. During the First World War he worked as a psychiatrist at Maghull and Craiglockhart military hospitals.