Answers to the question 'what is medical progress?' have always been contested, and any one response is always bound up with contextual ideas of personhood, society, and health. However, the widely held enthusiasm for medical progress escapes more general critiques of progress as a conceptual category. From the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and the medical humanities, Vanessa Rampton sheds light on the politics of medical progress and how they have downplayed the tensions between individual and social goods. She examines how a shared consensus about its value gives medical progress vast political and economic capital, revealing who benefits, who is left out, and who is harmed by this narrative. From ancient Greece to artificial intelligence, exploring the origins and ethics of different visions of progress offers valuable insight into how we can make them more meaningful in future. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

‘Brilliantly combining philosophical acuity and medical and historical perspectives, Rampton reveals the intricacies of medical progress and the meaning of this term. Her multidimensional approach develops essential conceptual tools that philosophers, historians, practitioners and, in fact, everyone affected by medical progress need for understanding our practices surrounding medicine and health.'

Nadja El Kassar - Professor of Philosophy, University of Lucerne

‘Opening up a scenic view on the winding and diverging paths of ideas of progress in modern medicine, this engaging book highlights the contingencies, tensions, but also the agency that any conceptualisation of improvement entails, and helps to ask better questions about the past, present and future of medicine.'

Lara Keuck - Professor of History and Philosophy of Medicine, Bielefeld University