In his new book “The Healing of the World”, Ronald D. Gerste tells vividly and true to life about the revolutionary events and scientific developments in the period from 1840 to 1914. During these decades, medicine made unimagined advances: the gripping portrait of an era, society , Revolutionized science, culture and politics.
(colored wood engraving, 1890). (Image: AKG)
The decades between 1840 and 1914 mark a turning point that still shapes our existence today. In this era, modern medicine developed and changed the relationship between humans and their bodies and their suffering. Successes in healing became possible that were previously unthinkable and created the basis of our lives today.
It was researchers and physicians like Robert Koch, Ignaz Semmelweis and Thomas G. Morton who made decisive advances in the direction of modern medicine. Accompanying these pioneers of the present also means embarking on a journey through time into a breathtaking epoch – in which the railroad and the steamship brought people to distant horizons, in which the world was truly globalized and in which new thoughts and beliefs were changing and led a revolution. In Europe, with Italy and the German Reich, two new nation-states emerged; In the United States, the civil war between North and South decided on the end of slavery – from then on the United States embarked on the path to industrialization, expansion and world power. Personalities who shaped this era were Otto von Bismarck and Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon III.
But man remained man, and nature cannot be finally conquered: at the end of the hopeful epoch there was a catastrophe created by statesmen. And from 1918 to 1920, almost like a tragic epilogue to the history of medical triumphs, a virus-caused pandemic raged: the Spanish flu. “This unique, dynamic era already fascinated me as a student,” explains book author Ronald D. Gerste, “when I was studying the somewhat unusual subject combination of human medicine and history in my native Düsseldorf.
The enthusiasm for this time, in which medicine, but also the other sciences and technological developments with historically unique successes and thanks to fascinating pioneers, changed the lives of future generations for the better, has never diminished. For me it is a saga of hope, belief in the future and triumphs. “
Ronald D. Barley
The healing of the world. The Golden Age of Medicine 1840-1914
Stuttgart 2021 hardcover,
24.00 EUR (D),
24.70 EUR (A)
www.klett-cotta.de