Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World (FT Press Science) Hardcover – March 7, 2010 Author: Visit Amazon's Jon Queijo Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0137137486 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World – March 7, 2010 Download for free books Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World – March 7, 2010 for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Review
"This very well-written, cogent, and accessible book by freelance writer Queijo will be an important resource, especially for a lay audience. Each of the ten medical discoveries mentioned in the title is really a chapter delimiting the history of medicine. Chapters range from The World's First Physician: Hippocrates and the Discovery of Medicine' to 'A Return to Tradition: The Rediscovery of Alternative Medicine.' This book deserves a very wide readership. Especially useful for general readers, it also will be applicable in undergraduate education across a surprising range of disciplines."
Summing Up:Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-level undergraduates, general readers, and researchers/faculty. Reprinted with permission from CHOICE, copyright by the American Library Association.
About the Author
Jon Queijo has been writing about science, medicine, and mental health for more than 25 years, in positions that include senior medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry, staff writer for the New England Journal of Medicine consumer publication Weekly Briefings, and staff writer for Bostonia magazine. His freelance articles have appeared in various publications, including Brain Work (The Dana Foundation), Psychology and Personal Growth, Environment, and Science Digest.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World – March 7, 2010
- Series: FT Press Science
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: FT Press; 1 edition (March 7, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0137137486
- ISBN-13: 978-0137137480
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #813,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a strong book and could have been a great one.
The basic idea is to outline how the ten greatest medical breakthroughs came about and the impact each of them had on humanity. Queijo is a fine writer and has a good eye for just how much detail he can include without losing the attention of non-scientists. In fact, I think this book can be read by people as young as their early teenage years.
Queijo has kept the book just about as jargon free as he can, and he has a great ear for the facts you think you know but don't. As an example, everyone knows how Joseph Lister, returning from vacation, discovered a mold in a dirty petri dish that killed the surrounding germs. That mold was penicillin.
However, what you don't know is that there are many different types of penicillin, and only one has the magic anti-baterial properties. You also don't know that there was a particular and improbable temperature change required for the penicillin to be effective at all. Finally, you don't know that there was no penicillin spores of the effective type anywhere on the floor of Lister's lab, so how did it get there? Queijo knows it all and he tells the story well.
He also knows why inventor's discovered effective anesthetic agents a half century before they were deployed, and why no one thought it was worth following up. Or that Gregor Mendel went to his deathbed knowing the importance of his genetic experiments, but was unable to convince anyone else of same.
These stories are all important and told with a riveting pace that reminds one of one of the finer whodunits.
The author describes what he believes are the 10 greatest discoveries in medicine that have saved millions, etc. 9 of them are uncontroversial discoveries that have been on other top-10 lists, but his 10th choice is one that no other list of top discoveries has ever included. He realizes that, and even admits in his introduction that a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine refused to review his book because there is no such thing as alternative medicine, only treatments that work and treatments that don't. But he "respectfully disagrees."
Hippocrates' discovery that disease had natural causes, sanitation, germ theory, anesthesia, X-rays, vaccines, antibiotics, genetics, and treatments for mental disorders are all worthy candidates for the list. But Queijo ludicrously lists the "rediscovery of alternative medicine" as the tenth "great discovery." He presents no evidence (because there is no evidence) that alternative medicine has "saved millions" or that it has saved anyone. He doesn't realize that alternative medicine represents a betrayal of exactly the kind of rigorous scientific thinking and testing that led to all the other discoveries. His list of ten breakthroughs is actually a list of 9 breakthroughs and one breakdown.
He tells compelling human-interest stories about the discoveries. The complexities, the mis-steps, the near-misses, and the ups and downs make fascinating reading. He offers fascinating tidbits of historical information. He tells how, in the early days after the discovery of x-rays, Thomas Edison received a request to "Please send me one pound of X-rays and bill as soon as possible."
Most of the book is entertaining and informative, but in the chapter on alternative medicine, Queijo loses it entirely.
Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World – March 7, 2010 Download
Please Wait...