A History of Medicine in 50 Discoveries (History in 50 Series)

by Marguerite Vigliani M. D., Gale Eaton, Phillip Hoose

Overview

Vigliani and Eaton’s high-interest exploration of medicine begins in prehistory.
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. From Mesopotamian pharmaceuticals and Ancient Greek sleep therapy through midwifery, amputation, bloodletting, Renaissance anatomy, bubonic plague, and cholera to the discovery of germs, X-rays, DNA-based treatments and modern prosthetics, the history of medicine is a wild ride through the history of humankind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780884484004
Publisher:	Tilbury House Publishers
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Series:	History in 50 Series
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Marguerite Vigliani, MD (Barrington, RI) is Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology a tthe Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University. She has been a private solo OB/GYN practitioner for the last 36 years in Rhode Island, where she lives with her family. She has authored a number of medical case reports and clinical opinions for peer-reviewed journals, and she has taught medical students, residents, and fellows in OB/GYN.

Gale Eaton has spent a lifetime with books for children and young adults, first as a children’s librarian at the Boston Public Library and the Berkshire Athenaeum, and later as a professor of children’s literature at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is the author of four other books.

Phillip Hoose is the widely acclaimed author of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles including the National Book Award - and Newbery Honor - winning bookClaudette Colvin: Twice toward Justiceand theBoston Globe-Horn BookHonor winnerThe Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club. A graduate of Indiana University and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Hoose was for 37 years a staff member of The Nature Conservancy, dedicated to preserving the plants, animals, and natural communities of the Earth.

Table of Contents

Presenting the HISTORY IN 50 Series Phillip Hoose ix

Introduction: What's a Discovery? xiii

1 The Iceman: Forensic Analysis of a Neolithic Killing 1

2 A Parade of Ants: Magic and Folk Healing 5

3 Massage: Rubbing Out Demons and Kinks 9

4 Secrets of the Dead: Ancient Egyptian Mummifiers and Surgeons 13

Applied Anatomy: Surgery in Ancient India 16

5 170 BC: Sleep Therapy at the Temples of Asklepios 17

The Myth of Asklepios 20

The Placebo Effect and Double Blind Trials 21

6 AD 200: Galen Discovers Nerves and Humors 22

How Many Elements and Humors? 26

7 900: Al-Razi and Evidence-Based Medicine in the Middle Ages 27

Jundi-Shapur and the Survival of Learning 30

8 1508: Da Vinci's Heart 31

Renaissance Anatomy 34

9 1600: The Chamberlen Family Secret 35

Caesarean Sections 38

Midwifery and the Birthing Stool 39

10 1670: Looking through Van Leeuwenhoek's Tiny Microscopes 40

The Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge 43

A Proto-Germ Theory in the Renaissance? 44

11 1721: Fighting Smallpox and Public Opinion in Colonial Boston 45

Vanquishing Smallpox for Good 48

Royal Smallpox Treatments 49

Infected Blankets and Germ Warfare 50

12 1747: Limeys and the Conquest of Scurvy 51

Nutritional Deficiencies 55

White Rice Poisoning 56

13 1776: A Folk Remedy for Congestive Heart Failure 57

Ancient Pharmaceuticals 61

14 1799: Heroic Bloodletting, Leech Mania, and Discovering What Doesn't Work 62

Bloodletting in the Twenty-First Century 66

15 1816: Rene Laennec Invents the Stethoscope 67

Taking the Pulse 71

16 1828: Cutting for Stone 72

The Lancet: Outing an Incompetent Surgeon 75

Extracorporeal Shock-Wave Lithotripsy: A Minimally Invasive Solution? 76

17 1846: Laughing Gas 77

Magic Mushrooms 81

18 1847: Wash Your Hands 82

Florence Nightingale Battles the Army 85

19 1848: Monster Soup 87

The Miasma Theory and Correlation vs. Causation 91

Public Health in the Bronze Age 92

20 1854: Cholera and Epidemiology 93

Cholera Discoveries Lost and Found 96

Cholera and the Third World 97

21 1867: Gregor Mendel and Inherited Traits 98

Sickle-cell Trait: Mendelian Inheritance Meets Darwinian Selection 102

The Language of Genetics 103

22 1870: Discovering Ancient Skull Surgeries 104

The Legend of Hua Tuo and the Emperor's Headaches 107

23 1881: Spontaneous Generation and the Germ Theory of Disease 108

Joseph Lister Applies Germ Theory to Surgery 112

Koch's Postulates 113

24 1882: Tuberculosis Emerges from the Miasma 114

Desperate Cures: The Royal Touch and Burning the Vampire's Heart 117

25 1894: A Barrel of Snakes and an Antitoxin 118

Resisting Poisons in Antiquity 121

Science as a Competition 122

26 1896: The Discovery of X-Rays 123

27 1898: A Small-Game Hunter Fights Bubonic Plague 127

Did Yersinia Pestis Really Cause the Black Death? 132

28 1898: Viruses Borrow Life Support from Tobacco Leaves and Humans 133

29 1900: Marie Curie's Lab Glows in the Dark 137

Radiation Therapy: A Dangerous Panacea 141

30 1901: Making Blood Transfusions Safe 142

Blood Transfusions in War and Peace 146

31 1905: Hormones and Endocrinology 147

La Mujer Barbuda 150

The Pineal Gland 151

Serotonin: Not a Hormone 152

32 1907: Typhoid Mary Becomes the World's Most Notorious Cook 153

33 1909: Ehrlich's Magic Bullet and the Beginnings of Chemotherapy 157

Medicine and Artificial Dyes 160

Syphilis: Somebody Else's Disease 161

34 1922: Controlling Diabetes 162

35 1929: Fleming's Dirty Dishes Give Us Penicillin 166

Molds and Folk Medicine 169

36 1930: Psychosurgery 170

37 1939 - 1955: Rat Poison for a U.S. President 174

Vitamin K 177

38 1944: Discovering DNA 178

Watson and Crick Discover the Structure of DNA 182

The Human Genome Project 183

Genetic Counseling 184

39 1945: A Miracle Drug in the Sewage 185

40 1945: Saving Lives with Sausage Casings, Washing Machines, and Juice Cans 189

The Iron Lung 192

41 1951: Frankenstein and the Heart Machines 193

Alas, Poor Yorick! 196

Before Pacemakers: "I Sing the Body Electric!" 197

42 1967: Baruch Blumberg Discovers a Cancer-Causing Virus 198

43 1967: The First Heart Transplant 202

Ethical Issues in Transplantation 205

Microchimerism in Transplant Surgery 206

44 1972: A Magic Bullet from Chinese Medicine 207

Chairman Mao, Biomedicine, and Traditional Chinese Medicine 212

45 1978: The First Test Tube Baby 213

Whose Baby Is It? 217

Contraception 218

46 1983: Preventing Cancers 219

Vie Ethics of Discovery: Informed Consent 222

47 1998: MMR Vaccine, Autism, Discovery, and Fraud 224

Herd Immunity 228

Scientific Discovery and Fraud 229

48 2011: Bionic Parts 230

Drug-Eluting Implants 234

49 2013: Poop Therapy for the Human Microbiome 235

50 2016: Researching the Zika Virus 238

Conclusion 243

Glossary 247

Sources 251

Endnotes 279

Index 298

Editorial Reviews

Marguerite Vigliani, MD, distinguished Rhode Island obstetrician gynecologist, and Clinical Professor at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has published, with co-author, Gale Eaton, retired professor of children’s literature in the University of Rhode Island’s graduate school of library and information services, a beautiful book on the history of medicine. In this era of Kindle, e-books and e-magazines, it is a joy to hold in one’s hands a book that not only feels good, with a significant heft to it, but is beautiful to look at, with pleasing print format, wonderful layout, shiny cover and gorgeous illustrations. It is a history of medicine for middle and high school students, part of a series intended to grab kids’ attention by focusing on 50 exciting stories in history, in this case, the history of medicine. Of course there can not be a consensus on the 50 most important or the 50 most exciting stories, just as there can’t be universal agreement on who should win a Nobel prize each year, but these are wonderful stories. I must admit up front that Marguerite is an old friend, who delivered two of my children, so that my review may be a tad short of “objective,” but this is Rhode Island, where there are way less than 6 degrees of separation. Marguerite thought that since I’m a neurologist I’d be most interested in the story on trephining, which traced the history of the practice, seen in skulls of people who had survived for many years after the procedure. But I actually liked best the story about Calmette, an early immunologist who will forever be linked with the BCG inoculation against tuberculosis. He was interested in developing an anti-snake venom treatment and was able, in 1894 to purchase a barrel full of cobras from India. As an ardent believer in the balance between evidence and experience based medicine I was taken by the story of al-Razi, a legendary Persian physician in the late 800’s, who apparently published early, if not the earliest, controlled clinical trials. One demonstrated that epileptics who received sneeze therapy had fewer seizures than those who did not, and that bleeding reduced symptoms of presumed meningitis, compared to controls who were not bled. So much for evidenced based medicine. We learn that Leonardo da Vinci lingered by an elderly dying man to perform a dissection as soon as possible. DNA, blood circulation, the discovery of penicillin and 40+ more topics are cleverly discussed, in a straightforward and engaging manner, that encourages the reader to think about the larger issues associated with each of these 50 medical advances.This will make a great Christmas present for middle school and high school students who might need a little encouragement to learn more about medicine and its history.
”

Joseph H. Friedman

Marguerite Vigliani, MD, distinguished Rhode Island obstetrician gynecologist, and Clinical Professor at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has published, with co-author, Gale Eaton, retired professor of children’s literature in the University of Rhode Island’s graduate school of library and information services, a beautiful book on the history of medicine. In this era of Kindle, e-books and e-magazines, it is a joy to hold in one’s hands a book that not only feels good, with a significant heft to it, but is beautiful to look at, with pleasing print format, wonderful layout, shiny cover and gorgeous illustrations. It is a history of medicine for middle and high school students, part of a series intended to grab kids’ attention by focusing on 50 exciting stories in history, in this case, the history of medicine. Of course there can not be a consensus on the 50 most important or the 50 most exciting stories, just as there can’t be universal agreement on who should win a Nobel prize each year, but these are wonderful stories. I must admit up front that Marguerite is an old friend, who delivered two of my children, so that my review may be a tad short of “objective,” but this is Rhode Island, where there are way less than 6 degrees of separation. Marguerite thought that since I’m a neurologist I’d be most interested in the story on trephining, which traced the history of the practice, seen in skulls of people who had survived for many years after the procedure. But I actually liked best the story about Calmette, an early immunologist who will forever be linked with the BCG inoculation against tuberculosis. He was interested in developing an anti-snake venom treatment and was able, in 1894 to purchase a barrel full of cobras from India. As an ardent believer in the balance between evidence and experience based medicine I was taken by the story of al-Razi, a legendary Persian physician in the late 800’s, who apparently published early, if not the earliest, controlled clinical trials. One demonstrated that epileptics who received sneeze therapy had fewer seizures than those who did not, and that bleeding reduced symptoms of presumed meningitis, compared to controls who were not bled. So much for evidenced based medicine. We learn that Leonardo da Vinci lingered by an elderly dying man to perform a dissection as soon as possible. DNA, blood circulation, the discovery of penicillin and 40+ more topics are cleverly discussed, in a straightforward and engaging manner, that encourages the reader to think about the larger issues associated with each of these 50 medical advances.This will make a great Christmas present for middle school and high school students who might need a little encouragement to learn more about medicine and its history.
”

RI Med J

As part of the History in 50 series, which weaves together discrete historical events, this work focuses on the evolution of medicine and healing modalities since the dawn of humankind. The intriguing story begins with the excavation of the 5,000 B.C. Neolithic man, given the name “Ötzi the Iceman,” who was found with animal skins containing healing medicinal fungi and tattoos on his body that corresponded with specific acupuncture points. The time-traveling thread continues to the Greek islands of Epidauros around 170 BC to the site of the Asklepieion, the temple of healing. Here, patients were encouraged to engage in sleep therapy while the legendary god worked to cure their ailments. Like building blocks through time, the discoveries of innovators such as Florence Nightingale, Joseph Lister, Paul Ehrlich, James Watson and Francis Crick, and Christian Bernard are thoroughly presented. The book even discusses the present-day public health battle against the Zika virus. The narrative is easy to follow and may appeal to young adults, undergraduates and pre-med students, and general readers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
”

D. J. Winchester

11/01/2017
Vigliani (obstetrics & gynecology, Warren Alpert Medical Sch., Brown Univ.) and Eaton (children's lit, Univ. of Rhode Island Graduate Sch. of Library and Information Studies; A History of Civilization in 50 Disasters) have compiled here the events that changed human health and treatment of disease through the ages. Appearing in roughly chronological order, some topics span centuries (massage from the seventh century BCE to modern day), while others focus on a single invention (the stethoscope in 1816) or discovery (X-rays in 1896). A thoughtful introduction notes that some findings were made independently of one another and that several theories (handwashing fights spread of infection) were ignored for many years. VERDICT The photos, graphics, and accessible text will appeal to a range of readers, from middle schoolers to adults.

Library Journal

09/01/2017
Gr 7 Up—Tackling everything from Ötzi, the Neolithic man who treated his tapeworm with a fungus, to the more recent (late 20th-century) realization that an extract from the artemisia plant can combat malaria, Vigliani and Eaton examine the history of medicine. The topics are arranged chronologically, and the narrative thoughtfully weaves together the seemingly disparate worlds of ancient and modern medicine, reminding readers that current lifesaving advances are often based on the work of ancient medical practitioners, folk medicine traditions, and plant knowledge. Chapters are comprehensible and short (approximately five pages in length) and contain colorful illustrations as well as boxes highlighting related subjects of interest. Chapter endnotes and bibliographical sources are extensive. VERDICT Bloodletting, organ transplants, the discovery of DNA—it's all here. Those who tackle this book from cover to cover will be rewarded with an understanding of medical progress throughout history, while browsers are sure to return for more. Teachers will find a rich resource likely to spark further student research.—Ragan O'Malley, Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn

School Library Journal