Here is a list of the best Medical History books, some I have read myself, some that I did research on, and all have great reviews!
- The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2007)
- The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (The Norton History of Science) (1999)
- Viruses, Plagues, and History: Past, Present and Future (2009)
- Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries (2019)
- Medicine From Cave Dwellers to Millennials (2018)
- Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages (2013)
- Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital (2017)
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (2008)
- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2017)
- Seattle’s Medic One: How We Don’t Die (2019)
- Accidental Medical Discoveries: How Tenacity and Pure Dumb Luck Changed the World (2016)
- The Black Death: A History From Beginning to End (2019)
- The Cambridge History of Medicine (2006)
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2007)
A National Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year It’s the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world.
The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (The Norton History of Science) (1999)
“To combine enormous knowledge with a delightful style and a highly idiosyncratic point of view is Roy Porter’s special gift, and it makes [this] book . . . alive and fascinating and provocative on every page.”―Oliver Sacks, M.D. Hailed as “a remarkable achievement” (Boston Sunday Globe) and as “a triumph: simultaneously entertaining and instructive, witty and thought-provoking . . .
Viruses, Plagues, and History: Past, Present and Future (2009)
The story of viruses and humanity is a story of fear and ignorance, of grief and heartbreak, and of great bravery and sacrifice. Michael Oldstone tells all these stories as he illuminates the history of the devastating diseases that have tormented humanity, focusing mostly on the most famous viruses. Oldstone begins with smallpox, polio, and measles.
Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries (2019)
As a Yale School of Medicine physician, the New York Times bestselling author of Every Patient Tells a Story, and an inspiration and adviser for the hit Fox TV drama House, M.D., Lisa Sanders has seen it all.
Medicine From Cave Dwellers to Millennials (2018)
Medicine and disease has preoccupied man from the age of the cave dweller to the present day millennial generation. In all cultures and eras populations have sought the means to preserve health and restore it when absent. How physicians and scientists throughout history have traveled the long circuitous journey to comprehend the mysteries of the human body, origins of disease and treat the ill is the subject of this book.
Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages (2013)
Strange Medicine casts a gimlet eye on the practice of medicine through the ages that highlights the most dubious ideas, bizarre treatments, and biggest blunders.
Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital (2017)
Bellevue Hospital, on New York City’s East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (2008)
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2017)
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, and Chicago Tribune, now in paperback with a new reading group guideMedicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable.
Seattle’s Medic One: How We Don’t Die (2019)
In 1968, Dr. Leonard Cobb, along with Seattle fire chief Gordon Vickery, began to implement something new and daring: one of the country’s first pre-hospital coronary care systems. Along with Dr. Michael Copass, they started Medic One, an emergency service unlike any other. One year later, the first vehicle equipped with a defibrillator and ten highly trained Seattle firefighters took to the streets.
Accidental Medical Discoveries: How Tenacity and Pure Dumb Luck Changed the World (2016)
Many of the world’s most important and life-saving devices and techniques were often discovered purely by accident.
The Black Death: A History From Beginning to End (2019)
The Black DeathSweeping across the known world with unchecked devastation, the Black Death claimed between 75 million and 200 million lives in four short years. In this engaging and well-researched book, the trajectory of the plague’s march west across Eurasia and the cause of the great pandemic is thoroughly explored.
The Cambridge History of Medicine (2006)
The Cambridge History of Medicine, first published in 2006, surveys the rise of medicine in the West from classical times to the present. Covering both the social and scientific history of medicine, this volume traces the chronology of key developments and events, while at the same time engaging with the issues, discoveries, and controversies that have beset and characterized medical progress.
Best Medical History Books: The Ultimate Collection
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some medical history books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea
Author(s): Sandra Eder
ID: 3410856, Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Year: 2022, Size: 1 Mb, Format: epub
Dissection in Classical Antiquity: A Social and Medical History
Author(s): Claire Bubb
ID: 3525118, Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Year: 2022, Size: 5 Mb, Format: pdf
Vaccines: A Graphic History (Medical Breakthroughs)
Author(s): Paige V. Polinsky, Dante Ginevra
ID: 3559833, Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group, Graphic Universe ™, Year: 2022, Size: 9 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not definite. Some books are absolutely record-breakers according to The New York Times, others are composed by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant links you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.