Mirage of Health

Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change Paperback – October 1, 1987

Author: Rene Dubos | Language: English | ISBN: 0813512603 | Format: PDF, EPUB

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Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change – October 1, 1987
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• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (October 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813512603
• ISBN-13: 978-0813512600
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Medicine > Special Topics > History
  • #50 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Medicine
  • #80 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Administration & Policy > Public Health

I wish I knew of more books like Mirage of Health. Written by a scientist--Dubos was a Harvard-trained Microbiologist--it is not by any means an academic work. It doesn't make use of footnotes or even a bibliography. We are left to trust in Dubos' authority as scientist and author which I had no problem doing.

Despite being written in 1959, the book is surprisingly fresh and almost timeless. This is mostly because Dubos writes primarily about events and trends that occurred in the decades and centuries before it was written and doesn't spend a long time focusing on the contemporary state of medical science. One interesting exception to this is when Dubos mentions that cancer's cause--which is now known to be genetic mutation--was unknown at the time of writing.

Dubos makes it clear that the doctrine of specific etiology (that is the notion that all medical problems can be traced to a certain, physical cause) has contributed more to medicine in the last century than probably any other idea. Yet Dubos also stresses the limitations of this mindset. He emphasizes that with physical ailments, there are many causes at work and it is difficult or impossible to determine the most significant among these. By emphasizing the multitude of factors that determine our health, Dubos makes it clear that balance with our environment is of utmost importance to maintenance of health.

Dubos illustrates this point historically in a most vivid fashion. In the presence of a new pathogen, for example, a population can be decimated. Dubos uses the example of the introduction of smallpox to America as an example of such devastation. Another way that Dubos illustrates humans' relationship with their environment is the story of a Zulu tribe in Africa.

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