Doctors and Discoveries: Lives That Created Today's Medicine

by John Galbraith Simmons

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618152768
• ISBN13: 9780618152766
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

How today's health practitioners work

Centuries of research and medical insights have contributed to the fundamental principles of today's medical and research practices: Doctors & Discoveries is dedicated to the pioneers who made these initial medical discoveries. Key figures in medicine from past to present are detailed in a collective biography of medical history chronicling their lives and achievements. Solid links are drawn between discoveries, discoverers, and how today's health practitioners work.

A great addition to your reference library

A splendid book for writers, doctors, scientists, reference librarians and any educated reader who wants to understand the history of medicine through the biographies of its chief proponents. From Paracelsus and Harvey to Koch and Gallo, this is a highly readable history. Many unfamiliar names lie behind numerous major discoveries and the reader is in for a real education discovering the pioneers of molecular biology, enzyme chemistry, viral theories of cancer, medical education, electrocardiography, cellular immunity and much more. A pefect gift for the young daughter or son who is looking forward to a medical career.

Great book on physicians as explorers/inventors!

I am always on the look out for decent books that can be used to teach students about phenomenal lives and mentors. This book accurately fills that need. Most of the physicians in this book were also researchers before scientific research was even a field. Many of these men (they are mostly men) came from backgrounds that were not particularly conducive to doing medicine, let alone the research that they ended up doing. Their families were not aristrocratic or learned, many had fathers who were tradesmen...yet for some reason, they chose to enter fields of medicine. Medicine was not always the prestigious field or career that it is now. Often, it was looked down upon, especially prior to its consolidation as a science. The work that these men did helped to raise the prestige of medicine, anatomy, physiology, and neuroscience. Medicine, like most sciences, is a long ongoing process of learning. Not just about the body, but about what chemicals and what therapies are going to work for individuals. One of the things that this book makes clear is that those who succeeded in furthering medical knowledge all possessed great curiosity as well as often possessing great courage. So many times, these guys had to buck the current establishment, whether it was clergy, current medical knowledge (often dating back to Greece even in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance), and even governmental authority. This book is well-written, and provides a lot of diverse stories about medical achievement mainly in European countries. There are a few chapters dedicated to women and only a couple involving men from the Middle East, none from the Orient. The author does bring up alternative medicine, but since I can think of several other medical discoveries and physician/inventors from parts of the non-European world that could and should be mentioned, I think this book should be followed by another including the inspiring stories from the rest of the world. All children and all adolescents, need to see mentors, scientists, and physicians that are like them; that it is possible to achieve in this area no matter where you are from, what gender or race or ability you have. This book is a critical and good start, but it is essential to take it farther...It's important for kids to have diverse meanings for the word 'hero'. With so many in the sports world, in the world of entertainment, and now in the business world providing bad examples, it is paramount that teachers and parents provide alternatives to these people as to what actually constitutes a 'hero'. So many in the media and in government lambast how poorly our students are doing in science and math education, yet part of the problem lies in the fact that adults are not providing good examples of what is important and what is not. This book helps to place this critical emphasis back on the importance of intelligence, of creativity, and of compassion for fellow human beings. A truly vital book to have for educators