"This is a brilliant work of lasting value to both sociology and anthropology by a person combining the talent of keen observer with the highest level of theoretical sophistication. . . a major contribution to our understanding of the nature and structure of a significant social situation."--David M. Schneider, The University of Chicago. Experiment Perilous covers a three-year period In the lives of the patients and physicians in a small and intense hospital community. It represents a pioneering, participant-observation-based study of a hospital ward as a social system. In a new epilogue. Fox provides a historical and sociological account of phenomena relevant to clinical investigations that she has observed in her forty-five years as a sociologist of medicine.

Renee C. Fox

Introduction to the 1974 Edition I Introduction to the Metabolic Research Group and Ward F-Second II The Physicians of the Metabolic Group: Some of their Problems and Stresses III How the Physicians of the Metabolic Group Came to Terms with their Problems and Stresses IV The Patients of Ward F-Second: Some of their Problems and Stresses V How the Patients of Ward F-Second Came to Terms with their Problems and Stresses VI Three F-Seconders: Paul O'Brian, Leo Angelico, and Jackie Foote VII Ward F-Second, the Metabolic Group, and the Sociologist VIII General Significance of "Experiment Perilous"