In an invigorating comparative and inter-disciplinary 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. The contributors provide an innovative, historical, and sociological account of the functions of quantification. | Body Counts by GERARD JORLAND, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters