Author:
Vigliani, Marguerite, author.
Edition Statement:First hardcover edition.
ImprintThomaston, Maine : Tilbury House Publishers, 2017.
Descriptionxvi, 303 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm.
Note:Introduction: What's a discovery? -- The iceman: forensic analysis of a neolithic killing -- A parade of ants: magic and folk healing -- Massage: rubbing out demons and kinks -- Secrets of the dead: ancient Egyptian mummifiers and surgeons -- 170 B.C.: sleep therapy at the temples of asklepios -- A.D. 200: Galen discovers nerves and humors -- 900: Al-Razi and evidence-based medicine in the Middle Ages -- 1508: Da Vinci's heart -- 1600: The Chamberlen family secret -- 160: Looking through Van Leeuwenhoek's tiny microscopes -- 1721: Fighting smallpox and public opinion in colonial Boston -- 1747: Limeys and the conquest of scurvy -- 1776: a folk remedy for congestive heart failure -- 1799: Heroic bloodletting, leech mania, and discovering what doesn't work -- 1816: Rene Laennec, invents the stethoscope -- 1828: Cutting for stone -- 1846: laughing gas -- 1847: wash your hands -- 1848: monster soup -- 1854: cholera and epidemiology -- 1867: Gregor Mendel and inherited traits -- 1870: discovering ancient skull surgeries -- 1881: spontaneous generation and the germ theory of disease -- 1882: Tuberculosis emerges from the miasma -- 1894: a barrel of snakes and an antitoxin -- 1896: the discovery of x-rays -- 1898: a small-game hunter fights bubonic plague -- 1898: viruses borrow life support from tobacco leaves and humans -- 1900: Marie Curie's lab glows in the dark -- 1901: making blood transfusions safe -- 1905: hormones and endocrinology -- 1907: Typhoid Mary becomes the world's most notorious cook -- 1909: Ehrlich's magic bullet and the beginnings of chemotherapy -- 1922: Controlling diabetes -- 1929: Fleming's dirty dishes give us penicillin -- 1930: Psychosurgery -- 1939-1955: rat poison for a U.S. president -- 1944: discovering DNA -- 1945: a miracle drug in the sewage -- 1945: saving lives with sausage casings, washing machines, and juice cans -- 1951: Frankenstein and the heart machines -- 1967: Baruch Blumberg discovers a cancer-causing virus -- 1967: the first heart transplant -- 1972: A magic bullet from Chinese medicine -- 1978: the first test tube baby -- 1983: Preventing cancers -- 1998: MMR vaccine, autism, discovery, and fraud -- 2011: bionic parts -- 2013: pooptherapy for the human microbiome -- 2016: researching the zika virus.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-278) and index.
Note:Discusses the circumstances surrounding fifty medicinal discoveries in history, from Mesopotamian pharmaceuticals to modern prosthetics.
