Just in: this excellent Library Journal review of Harold Y. Vanderpool’s Palliative Health Care: The 400-Year Quest for a Good Death!
Vanderpool (emeritus, history & philosophy of medicine, Inst. for the Medical Humanities, Univ. of Texas) has drawn upon “a vast literature on clinical medicine, medical research, palliative care practices and advocacy, personal testimonials, biomedical ethics, death and dying, the law, and the history of medicine and culture” as well as his own extensive career in the fields of medical ethics, death and dying, and suffering in this wide-ranging survey of the history of palliative care. From 1605, when Sir Francis Bacon proclaimed that physicians should enable persons to “pass peacefully out of life,” to the present, when dying patients’ “rights, protections, and number of choices…are…deserving of celebration,” although the author notes that the choices are often filled with pain. Vanderpool concludes that understanding the nature of contemporary palliative care is imperative for making good decisions. VERDICT: This wise and revealing study is sure to be valuable to the dying and those who love them, as well as to the physicians and other health professionals who care for them.—Marcia G. Welsh, Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH
Contact us for more information on this title. Happy reading.