Doctors

From the author of How We Die, the extraordinary story of the development of modern medicine, told through the lives of the physician-scientists who paved the way.

How does medical science advance? Popular historians would have us believe that a few heroic individuals, possessing superhuman talents, lead an unselfish quest to better the human condition. But as renowned Yale surgeon and medical historian Sherwin B. Nuland shows in this brilliant collection of linked life portraits, the theory bears little resemblance to the truth. Through the centuries, the men and women who have shaped the world of medicine have been not only very human, but also very much the products of their own times and places. Presenting compelling studies of great medical innovators and pioneers, Doctors gives us a fascinating history of modern medicine. Ranging from the legendary Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, to Andreas Vesalius, whose Renaissance masterwork on anatomy offered invaluable new insight into the human body, to Helen Taussig, founder of pediatric cardiology and co-inventor of the original "blue baby" operation, here is a volume filled with the spirit of ideas and the thrill of discovery."An erudite history of medicine...a welcome addition to any medical collection." -- Booklist



"Eloquent, informed, deeply committed." -- Los Angeles TimesSherwin B. Nuland, M.D., was a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University and the author of numerous books, including How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, which won the National Book Award, Lost in America: A Journey with My Father, Maimonides, and Leonardo da Vinci. In addition to his numerous articles for medical publications, he wrote for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic, Time, and The New York Review of Books. Dr. Nuland died in 2014.Author of How We Die and The Wisdom of the Body