This reader gives students in a history of medicine class, or the general reading public, a broad selection of readings about the many ways that disease and trauma have affected human populations over time. It draws from both primary and secondary sources to give a dual perspective of a) what was written at the time of various events, and b) what modern scholars have been able to ascertain from historical evidence. It has a broad scope both in time and space, covering materials from earliest Man to contemporary bioethical problems, and contains materials from India, China, Latin America, and the Muslim worlds as well as Europe and the United States. Rather than simply looking at great medical discoveries, it is purposely focused on how trauma and disease have been daily companions of human existence.

It fills a serious void in teaching materials in the history of medicine by taking a world perspective, using a combination of primary and secondary sources, covering a huge time span and putting emphasis on the problems created by medical progress, and most importantly, focusing on the effect that medical practices have had on ordinary people throughout history.