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9781421422763

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A powerful assessment of medicine's involvement with death and dying: a history highly recommended for any medical or ethical issues holding. Midwest Book Review Few libraries specializing in the history of medicine will not find this a valuable book to include in their collections. Watermark This is an important book that sets current debates over end-of-life care in their historical context, and reminds readers of the numerous historical decisions that shape the current situation. Choice Abel's book is a strong and welcome addition to the historiography of death and dying. Journal of American History An invaluable contribution. Abel does an admirable job uncovering a topic that was mostly absent in the medical literature. She successfully highlights a striking consequence of medicine's curative paradigm while also recovering the vital work that family and faith performed to fill the gap left by medical professionals in the twentieth century. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Lively and engaging. The Inevitable Hour offers a sensitive, patient-centered view of end-of-life experiences. Abel's gift for biography, of both the eminent and the obscure, provides a glimpse into a rich yet private world. It makes an important contribution to American medical history and to our understanding of human responses to suffering and adversity. Bulletin of the History of Medicine Through her in-depth analyses of hundreds of letters, articles, and books from the mid-eighteenth century to 1965 in the United States, the author of this book provides a very sobering and enlightening perspective on the perennial challenge of caring for the dying and the history of medical science's own avoidance of it even while trying to treat it. Historian The US way of dying is costly, conflicted, and confused, and apparently has long been so, according to Emily Abel's deeply researched and carefully argued The Inevitable Hour ... The book is richly researched with an impressive range of documentation. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History Emily Abel's thoroughly researched book steps into [a] broad historical narrative and gives context, detail, and definition. Reviews in American History While the work's narrative structure makes it ideal to read as a whole, each chapter could be excerpted in both upper- and lower-level classes in history, health policy, bioethics and religion. The work's accessible style makes it accommodating to undergraduates and laypeople, while its rigorous, inventive methods and ambitious claims ensure its value for scholars... Ultimately, Abel's book is of great importance to not only historical scholarship but also contemporary bioethics and health policy. -- Harold Braswell Social History of Medicine

A powerful assessment of medicine's involvement with death and dying: a history highly recommended for any medical or ethical issues holding. * Midwest Book Review * Few libraries specializing in the history of medicine will not find this a valuable book to include in their collections. * Watermark * This is an important book that sets current debates over end-of-life care in their historical context, and reminds readers of the numerous historical decisions that shape the current situation. * Choice * Abel's book is a strong and welcome addition to the historiography of death and dying. * Journal of American History * An invaluable contribution. Abel does an admirable job uncovering a topic that was mostly absent in the medical literature. She successfully highlights a striking consequence of medicine's curative paradigm while also recovering the vital work that family and faith performed to fill the gap left by medical professionals in the twentieth century. * Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences * Lively and engaging. The Inevitable Hour offers a sensitive, patient-centered view of end-of-life experiences. Abel's gift for biography, of both the eminent and the obscure, provides a glimpse into a rich yet private world. It makes an important contribution to American medical history and to our understanding of human responses to suffering and adversity. * Bulletin of the History of Medicine * Through her in-depth analyses of hundreds of letters, articles, and books from the mid-eighteenth century to 1965 in the United States, the author of this book provides a very sobering and enlightening perspective on the perennial challenge of caring for the dying and the history of medical science's own avoidance of it even while trying to treat it. * Historian * The US way of dying is costly, conflicted, and confused, and apparently has long been so, according to Emily Abel's deeply researched and carefully argued The Inevitable Hour ... The book is richly researched with an impressive range of documentation. * Canadian Bulletin of Medical History * Emily Abel's thoroughly researched book steps into [a] broad historical narrative and gives context, detail, and definition. * Reviews in American History * While the work's narrative structure makes it ideal to read as a whole, each chapter could be excerpted in both upper- and lower-level classes in history, health policy, bioethics and religion. The work's accessible style makes it accommodating to undergraduates and laypeople, while its rigorous, inventive methods and ambitious claims ensure its value for scholars... Ultimately, Abel's book is of great importance to not only historical scholarship but also contemporary bioethics and health policy. -- Harold Braswell * Social History of Medicine *

Author Information

Emily K. Abel is professor emerita at the UCLA-Fielding School of Public Health. She is the author of many books, including After the Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors and Hearts of Wisdom: American Women Caring for Kin, 1850-1940.

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