Doctors and Discoveries: Lives that Created today’s medicine

by John Gilbraith Simmons
Review by Priyanka Garg

A difficult case; battles for life, moments of weakness whendarkness surrounds and all one has is hope- such times need inspirations from stories of Doctors who fought all ods to win their battles and wars. Their grit, their determination, their belief in themselves shows us the way.Sparing a few hours to read this bookwill really be a worthwhile investment considering the lifetime returns it can bring you !

Published in 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company, it holds gripping account of lives that made the world of medicine what it is today.The engrossing details about the passionate lone rangers, who believed in their causes, pursued it till the end of their lives at times successfully and at times heart wrenchingly, only to be proved right by the course of time as history in the making watched it all as moot witness.

“…Laennec’S invention of the stethoscope in 1816 is one of the medicine’s famous discoveries made through happenstance..Laennec wrote, “I rolled a quire of paper into a sort of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear.’ With the improved sound, Laennec immediately recognised that he had found a new way of listening to the sounds emanating from within the chest. The technical term would be mediate ausculation…
“…at a time when brain surgery was in all cases a last resort, Cushing strove for better survival rates… the major problem presented by brain surgery was bleeding.Even eminent surgeons such as Victor Horsley frequently had success rates of only about fifty percent.Steve Lehrur, in his Explorers of the body, recalls one of Cushing’s own failures.Having excised a brain tumour, Cushing tried to cut off the stalk to which it had been attached,but this maneuver broke open the artery…”

A few excerps from the book.Threads of such anecdotes, facts and figures of medicine run throughout the length and breadth of the book and are woven intriguingly in this tapestry by John Galbraith.Capsuled, compiled and presented in six parts, ‘Doctors & Discoveries, lives that created today’s medicine,’ is an inspiring account of 86 lives.Dedication, conviction, perseverance and resilience that dot their successes and failures provide numerous valuable lessons for us to inculcate in our lives.

‘Doctors and discoveries’ is an excellent introduction to medical history and the personalities who shaped its course, the story of western medicine capsuled - the lives, passion, interests, ideas, inspirations, doubts and challenges faced by its most influential figures fro Hippocrates and Galen to inventor and revealer of anaesthesia William Thomas Green Morton to eccentric biologist Elie Metchnikoff whose theory of immune reaction didn’t find acceptance in his lietime but time and science later proved him right, to identification of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis by Robert

Koch to Bert Vogelstein a revolutionary in the field of cancer research to present day HIV researchers Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier-One can learn a lot from their lives.
The 1st Part has seven biographies- starts with Charles Darwin and ends with Galen representing the scope and trajectory of western medicine. The iind part entitled ‘The principle transformation’ contains 17 mini- biographies ranging from William Harvey to Oswald Avery. The iiird section is aptly titled, ‘Figures of Constant reference’.It has the profiles of most prominent personalities like John Hunter, Edward Jenner and Sigmund Freud who are constantly referred to wherever medicine is taught. The next section, Part IV th titled ‘Creating Modern Medicine’ contains 22 mini biographies of prolific personalities who in general laid the foundation of modern medicine and paved the path.

The Vth section named ‘Recent and Contemporary’ has profiles of molecular biologists, immunologists, neuroscientists, pharmacologists, enzyme hunters and determined soldiers engaged in the fight against cancer and AIDS .Its last section Part VI ‘ Omnium Gatherum’ has the miscellaneous has the miscellaneous gathering of personalities who left indelible mark on our world- a few of them from medical mainstreams, a few of them frpm medical mainstreams, a few of them not from the main streams.

A compulsive read. It certainly motivates us and teaches us to face tribulations bravely and gather our wit to think through overwhelming odds.As the author claims the whole history of western medicine does come alive through the trials, tribulations, failures and trumphs of the 86 individuals listed in this impresive Omnium- Gatherum.