Reviews for Introduction to the sociology of dentistry

The average rating for Introduction to the sociology of dentistry based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-09 00:00:00 Tammy Southerland This is an excellent account of how psychosomatic illnesses have been identified and evolved over the course of 200+ years. Shorter emphasizes that physicians, patients, and the culture work together to co-create a "symptom pool" from which to explain psychosomatic illnesses. The book provides a detailed account of these symptom pools and their relationship to European culture from about the 1750s up through the end of the 20th century. The book positions the United States and "new world" as relatively slow to react to advances in knowledge about psychosomatic illness in the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th century. Most of Shorter's source material comes from physicians records, published medical studies, or period textbooks. He does have a few patient accounts but these are vastly outnumbered by the physicians. Shorter acknowledges that this limits the scope of his study-- how different it might be if we knew, for example, how a patient felt about treatment with a placebo! Finally, most of the book focuses on women, the "classic" hysteric or neurasthenic. While this makes sense from the perspective of the "typical" patient, and certainly the patient who absorbed most of physicians time, I wanted to see a greater discussion about how and why physicians distinguished between similar symptoms in men and women. Shorter explains the inherent sexism and beliefs about female "weakness" but does not apply the same level of scrutiny to the cultural reasons that 19th century men did (or did not) suffer from unexplained symptoms. This is not a light read. Shorter traces detailed connections between physicians and clinics/hospitals, so there are a lot of names to keep track of. However, if you're looking for a book to explain why neurasthenia essentially vanished by the early 20th century, or when fatigue became both a symptom AND a diagnosis, this is the book for you.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-05 00:00:00 KiGa Pride I liked this book very much. It is thoughtful, well-researched, and offers a stimulating take on the history of psychosomatic illness. I detracted a star for two reasons. Firstly, the author seems to be unnecessarily biased against somatizing patients who refuse to consider psychological explanations. Secondly, the basic hypothesis, namely that a large number of physical complaints throughout modern history are due to psychological influences, needs a much more thorough argumentation, with a firmer basis in psychology, to be entirely convincing. But well worth a read despite these drawbacks.