Mavericks, Miracles, and Medicine : The Pioneers Who Risked Their Lives to Bring Medicine into the Modern Age

by Fenster, J. M.

• ISBN13: 9780786714155
• ISBN10: 0786714158
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-01
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Mavericks, Miracles, and Medicine brings to life stories of the pioneering geniuses, eccentrics, and free thinkers who moved beyond the conventions of their day at great personal riskoften with tragic resultsto push forward the boundaries of modern medicine. From Werner Forssmann, who was so confident in his theory that doctors could insert a catheter into a human heart for diagnostic purposes that he inserted one into his own heart, while watching on a live X-ray (and was basically thrown out of the profession, only to be awarded the Nobel Prize just before his death many years later), to Anton Von Leewenhoek, a draper and part-time janitor who discovered the existence of protozoa, bacteria, sperm, and blood cells; from Wilhelm Roentgen, who developed the X-ray machine in his basement with a single cathode ray and some cardboard, to Jean-Baptiste Denis, who gave the first-known blood transfusion (with sheep's blood) and was later charged with murder (on manufactured evidence). Mavericks, Miracles, and Medicine is populated with the heretics and visionaries who forever changed medical science, and is featured on the History Channel miniseries of the same name.

Author Biography

Julie M. Fenster is an author and historian

Table of Contents

Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	xiii
I. UNDERSTANDING THE BODY
The Art of Medicine	3	(16)
Andreas Vesalius
observation and anatomy
A Peculiar Light	19	(16)
Wilhelm Roentgen
the first X-ray
Picture of Youth	35	(14)
Werner Forssmann
the cardiac catheter
Never Say Die	49	(12)
Ian Wilmut and Dolly
cloning a mammal
II. GERM THEORY
Perfect Focus	61	(14)
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
the microscopic world
Too Much Trouble	75	(16)
Ignaz Semmelweis
hospital cleanliness
Public Enemy	91	(14)
Robert Koch
the tuberclerosis bacillus
Trailing Death	105	(18)
George A. Soper and Mary Mallon
"Typhoid Mary"
III. MAGIC BULLETS
Worldly Wise Lady	123	(12)
Mary Wortley Montagu
smallpox innoculation
Tag Ook	135	(14)
Paul Ehrlich
Salvarsan for syphilis
Et Al	149	(14)
Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz
a drug for TB
Battery Operated	163	(12)
Arne and Else-Marie Larsson
the cardiac pacemaker
IV. THE MIND
Organized Brain	175	(12)
Thomas Willis
depicting cranial anatomy
Lost in Thought	187	(12)
Franz Joseph Gall
phrenology
Ether Frolic	199	(18)
Horace Wells, William T.G. Morton, and Charles Jackson
surgical anesthetic
Human Feeling	217	(14)
David Ferrier and Frances Power Cobbe
brain localization and the animal-rights debate
V. TOWARD BETTER SURGERY
Transfusion of Murder	231	(12)
Jean-Baptiste Denis
experiments in blood transfusion
Master of the System	243	(14)
William Harvey
blood circulation
Long Way to Bypass	257	(12)
John H. Gibbon Jr.
the heart-lung machine
A Bit of Life	269	(14)
Joseph E. Murray and John P. Merrill
kidney transplantation
Endnotes	283	(16)
Index	299