A history of medicine in 50 discoveries
2017
Book
The 5,000-year-old Iceman discovered frozen in the Alps may have treated his gallstones, Lyme disease, and hardening of the arteries with the 61 tattoos that covered his body--most of which matched acupuncture points--and the walnut-sized pieces of fungus he carried on his belt. The herbal medicines chamomile and yarrow have been found on 50,000-year-old teeth, and neatly bored holes in prehistoric skulls show that Neolithic surgeons relieved pressure on the brain (or attempted to release evil spirits) at least 10,000 years ago.
Item Details
ISBN:
- 9780884485322
- 9780884484004
- 0884484009
Edition: First hardcover edition.
Description: xvi, 303 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-278) and index.
Contents:
- 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 BC: sleep therapy at the Temples of Asklepios
- AD 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
- 1670: 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 the 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
- 18989: 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 medicines
- 1978: the first test tube baby
- 1983: preventing cancers
- 1998:MMR vaccine, autism, discovery, and fraud
- 2011: bionic parts
- 2013: poop therapy for the human microbiome
- 2016: researching the Zika Virus.
LCCN: 2017933730
Control Number: 2625486
Publisher: Thomaston, ME : Tilbury House Publishers, 2017.