Doctors and Discoveries: Lives that Created Today's Medicine

John Simmons

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002 - Science - 459 pages

Doctors and Discoveries tells the story of Western medicine through the lives of its most influential figures, chosen for their relevance to contemporary medicine. With eighty-six profiles-from Hippocrates to today's gene hunters-this is the most extensive collection to be published in a single volume in more than fifty years. Famous figures like Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard are profiled alongside lesser-known but intriguing figures such as patent-medicine pioneer Lydia Pinkham and the founder of chiropractic, D. D. Palmer. Founders, modernizers, and heroes are presented in a spirited and engaging style that makes for engrossing reading or browsing. Doctors and Discoveries is the perfect gift for anyone interested in history, science, or just great storytelling. "For the history of medicine, and much of modern medicine itself, there can be no better introduction than these biographies skillfully woven into our accumulated knowledge. They make for compulsive reading." (Edward O. Wilson, University Professor at Harvard University)

What people are saying

Doctors and discoveries: lives that created today's medicine

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

The publisher's claim that this is the "first collective biography of medical history to be published in the last fifty years" might surprise Sherwin B. Nuland, whose Doctors: The Biography of ...

Contents

• Biology and Medicine: 3
• The Scope of Modern Medicine Cellular and Social: 8
• Medicine and Modem Experimental Physiology: 14
• The Germ Theory of Disease Microbiology: 18
• Foundations of Bacteriology: 24
• Rational Medicine: 29
• Western Medical Tradition: 34
• Part II The Principal Transformations: 39
• The Fobrico and the New Anatomy: 41
• Circulation of the Blood: 45
• A New Tradition in Medicine: 50
• His Anatomical Majesty: 55
• Doctrine of Tissues: 58
• The Physicians New Gaze: 62
• The Rise of German Medicine: 67
• A Science in the Making: 71
• The Numerical Method: 75
• An lntegrated Approach to Physiology: 80
• Anatomy Histology Physiology and Pathology: 84
• Modern Nursing: 88
• Antisepsis and Modern Surgery: 94
• Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen i184519233 The Discovery of X Rays: 100
• The Chromosomes: 105
• Discovering the Neurons: 109
• DNA: 113
• Part lll Figures of Constant Reference: 117
• The Rise of Surgery: 119
• Occupational Diseases and Environmental Hazards: 123
• A Poem About Syphilis a Theory of Contagion: 127
• The English Hippocrates: 132
• Medicine in the Eighteenth Century: 136
• Beginnings of Scientific Medicine and Surgery: 140
• Founder of Modern Dentistry: 145
• Treating the Insane: 148
• Vaccination Against Smallpox: 152
• The Demonstration of Anesthesia: 157
• Field Epidemiology Begins at the Broad Street Pump: 162
• Tragic Insight into Childbed Fever: 165
• Surgery Comes of Age: 169
• The Rise Decline and Persistence of Psychoanalysis: 173
• Part IV Creating Modern Medicine: 179
• Modern Clinical Medicine: 181
• Cellular Immunity: 186
• lnventing Electrocardiography: 191
• Humoral lmmunity: 195
• Surgery Science and Man the Unknown: 199
• The Discovery of lnsulin: 205
• The Wisdom of the Body: 210
• Genetic Disorders and Biochemical lndividuality: 214
• Basic Discoveries in Biochemistry: 218
• Educating Doctors: 222
• Arrival of the Brain Surgeon: 227
• Embryology and the Organizer: 232
• Discovering the First Neurotransmitter: 236
• The Krebs Cycle: 240
• The Discovery of Penicillin: 245
• Neurology Mapping the Brain: 251
• Microbes from the Soil: 256
• Cancer A Viral Theory: 261
• Persuading Viruses to Multiply: 266
• lnventing the Electron Microscope: 270
• Spare Parts Medicine: 275
• A New Theory of the lmmune System: 280
• PartV Recent and Contemporary: 285
• Radioimmunoassay: 287
• Raising Children in a Complicated World: 291
• The Enzyme Hunter: 296
• A New Agent of Disease: 302
• Smoking Health and Preventive Medicine: 307
• Psychiatry New Trends in Psychoanalysis: 312
• The Revolution in Diagnostic lmaging: 317
• Molecular Self and Nonself: 321
• The Rational Search for New Drugs: 326
• Molecular Biology Takes Command: 330
• Advances in Neuroscience: 335
• Sex Research and Therapy: 340
• The Chemistry of Immunity and the Biology of Neurology: 345
• Harold Varmus ib 1939l Molecular Pathways to Cancer: 351
• Raymond Damadian ib 1936l Magnetic Resonance lmaging: 356
• A Genetic Explanation for Cancer: 361
• Luc Montagnier n 19321 The Contentious Discovery of Human Immunodeficiency Virus HlV: 365
• Part Vl QmniumGatlicrum: 373
• Cicero of Medicine: 375
• Prince of Physicians: 379
• Persistence of the Midwife: 383
• The Progress of Homeopathy: 387
• Chiropractic: 392
• A Sure Cure: 396
• The Microbe Hunters: 401
• Founding the Red Cross: 405
• Envoy: 411
• Source Motes: 413
• Bibliography: 437
• lndex: 451

About the author

John Galbraith Simmons is the author of The Scientific 100 (1996), a book profiling one hundred of the most influential scientists, past and present. "[It] conveys both the excitement and the human dimensions of science" (Nature).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Doctors and Discoveries: Lives that Created Today's Medicine
• Author: John Simmons
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002
• ISBN: 0618152768, 9780618152766
• Length: 459 pages
• Subjects: Science / History