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Previous Volume 336:230-231 January 16, 1997 Number 3 Next

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By Jeffrey P. Baker. 247 pp., illustrated. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. $45. ISBN 0-8018-5173-4.

Every medical device has a history that is usually thought of as technological — the story of successive refinements in machines and tools. But instruments of diagnosis and healing also reflect an understanding of the pathophysiologic states they are designed to address. The history of devices is thus also a history of diseases and of patients.

There is yet a third facet to the history of medical devices: the history of the forces that shape how and when an approach is introduced and adopted. This aspect contains many puzzles. Why did Thomas Latta's use of intravenous-fluid therapy for vascular collapse . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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