Mark Jackson, Asthma: The Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xi + 249. pound12.99. ISBN 978 0 19 923795 1.

摘要

Marcel Proust, son of a physician and one of France's literary heroes, spent most of his life in his bedroom indisposed from his many ailments, chief among them asthma. In this exceptional book Mark Jackson traces the history of asthma from antiquity to the present, using autobiographical and literary commentaries from Proust (among others) to illustrate the patient's experience of asthma. In a close reading of texts, narratives, theories and suffering, Jackson skilfully weaves medical theory, patient experience, and popular and literary culture into a brilliant picture that will interest historians of medicine, cultural historians and a broader reading public likely to include many touched personally by the disease.