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Man Adapting
The dominant theme of the present book is that the states of health or disease are the expressions of the success or failure experienced by the organism in its efforts to respond adaptively to environmental challenges.
- GenresScience
538 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1965
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82 people want to read
About the author
René Dubos
86 books18 followersRené Jules Dubos was an American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, and humanist. He is credited as an author of the maxim, "Think globally, act locally".
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 6, 2025
For a book written in the 1960s, it's amazing how much of this is still valid. Most of the historical improvements in health around the world have been from non-medical interventions. While evidence-based medicine is valuable, more and more spending on medical care does not produce linear increases in health. To understand and optimize population health, one needs to look beyond the "doctrine of specific etiology" and see human beings in the context of their environments and behaviors.
It is either sad or comforting to see that controversies then, like mandatory childhood immunization, are still controversial now.
Similar and shorter:
The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis?
Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change
Quotes:
-DDT went further toward the eradication of malariologists than of mosquitoes.
-...most pathogens are widely distributed and yet do not cause clinical disease except in a very small percentage of persons and animals harboring them
-[A] most important aspect of the epidemiology of disease (as contrasted with the epidemiology of infection) has to do with the factors that upset the equilibrium between host and parasite and thereby convert dormant infection into overt disease.
-The very fact that the etiology of most degenerative diseases probably involves a constellation of factors complicates the analytical work of the epidemiologist and the experimenter, but it increases the potential range of control measures by making it possible to break the chain of causation at different links.
-The sanitary ideal developed at first without any support from laboratory science. ... it emerged from the conviction that the high rates of disease and death were largely preventable because they were due to filth, dirt, crowding, and other social factors that could be corrected.
-the disease problems created by the Industrial Revolution stimulated in the Western world a crusading spirit that engendered great social reforms and a healthier environment.
Like the lay public, the scientific community has paid little heed to the fact that the diseases characteristic of our times are to a large extent the consequences of changes in the ways of life and in the environment. The search for the environment determinants of disease is not a fashionable topic and carries little scientific prestige.
A kind of crusade similar to that conducted by the nineteenth century sanitarians is needed to create the social atmosphere in which the study of long-range consequences is considered an essential part of technological research.
-several medial problems have all but disappeared without benefit of scientific understanding, through a process which has been called “historic bypass.” For example, infantile diarrheas are now scarce in Western countries despite the fact that their etiologies are not at all understood
It is either sad or comforting to see that controversies then, like mandatory childhood immunization, are still controversial now.
Similar and shorter:
The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis?
Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change
Quotes:
-DDT went further toward the eradication of malariologists than of mosquitoes.
-...most pathogens are widely distributed and yet do not cause clinical disease except in a very small percentage of persons and animals harboring them
-[A] most important aspect of the epidemiology of disease (as contrasted with the epidemiology of infection) has to do with the factors that upset the equilibrium between host and parasite and thereby convert dormant infection into overt disease.
-The very fact that the etiology of most degenerative diseases probably involves a constellation of factors complicates the analytical work of the epidemiologist and the experimenter, but it increases the potential range of control measures by making it possible to break the chain of causation at different links.
-The sanitary ideal developed at first without any support from laboratory science. ... it emerged from the conviction that the high rates of disease and death were largely preventable because they were due to filth, dirt, crowding, and other social factors that could be corrected.
-the disease problems created by the Industrial Revolution stimulated in the Western world a crusading spirit that engendered great social reforms and a healthier environment.
Like the lay public, the scientific community has paid little heed to the fact that the diseases characteristic of our times are to a large extent the consequences of changes in the ways of life and in the environment. The search for the environment determinants of disease is not a fashionable topic and carries little scientific prestige.
A kind of crusade similar to that conducted by the nineteenth century sanitarians is needed to create the social atmosphere in which the study of long-range consequences is considered an essential part of technological research.
-several medial problems have all but disappeared without benefit of scientific understanding, through a process which has been called “historic bypass.” For example, infantile diarrheas are now scarce in Western countries despite the fact that their etiologies are not at all understood
January 3, 2021
A rather peculiar book, perhaps best read as a marker of the state of scientific knowledge when it was published in 1965. Structured around terms that are largely outmoded at this point, such as the presumption of homeostasis as the “natural” condition, it also reflects very much the anxieties of Western intellectuals at the moment it was written — of nuclear war, overpopulation, resource depletion, and genetic decay. Firmly structured around human exceptionalism.
July 25, 2010
Old book and very limitied edtion! Mr. Prof. Gunawan Tjahjono, is my favorite lecture when I was a student at depok city who recommended this book to me and took this book from his own library at his house after we shared each other about my topic. He's very smart, wise and unique lecture for me...I adore him as a good person and lecture for his job.
Thanx so much Prof. Gunawan for being mylecture and myguide so, I could finished mythesis by ur kindness and wisely to me very..very much and of course by the grace of my beloved God, Allah,swt. It's a very good result for me..Thank you so much...:)
This book tells about man adapting in new environment from the begining until last.
best regards,
YP
Thanx so much Prof. Gunawan for being mylecture and myguide so, I could finished mythesis by ur kindness and wisely to me very..very much and of course by the grace of my beloved God, Allah,swt. It's a very good result for me..Thank you so much...:)
This book tells about man adapting in new environment from the begining until last.
best regards,
YP
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews