Body counts : medical quantification in historical and sociological perspectives

In an invigorating comparative and interdisciplinary reconsideration of the role of different types of medical "counting," this wide-ranging bilingual volume takes us from the mortality tables of the eighteenth century to the movement for "evidence-based medicine" in our own day.

Culled from the proceedings of "La quantification dans les sciences medicales et de la sante: perspective historique" held at the Musee Claude-Bernard in France in 2002, "Body Counts" moves beyond the usual emphasis on public health and clinical medicine to include the central role of numbers in laboratory work and medical instrumentation. "Body Counts" provides an innovative, historical, and sociological account of the functions of quantification.

The contributors include: Luc Berlivet (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Alberto Cambrosio (McGill University), Sir Iain Chalmers (James Lind Library, Oxford), Nicholas Dodier (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Michael Donnelly (Bard College), Volker Hess (Humboldt-University), Peter Keating (University of Quebec at Montreal), Ann La Berge (Virginia Tech University), Ilana Lowy (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Harry M.Marks (Johns Hopkins University), Lion Murard (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Mark Parascandola (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland), Theodore M.

Porter (University of California at Los Angeles), Andrea Rusnock (University of Rhode Island), Christiane Sinding (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), and Ulrich Trohler (Institut fur Geschichte der Medizin der Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat).