Anatomy Of Human

Why are you alive right now? Chances are, you owe your life to one of the remarkable medical discoveries in this book. Maybe it was vaccines. Or antibiotics. Or X-rays. Revolutionary medical breakthroughs like these haven’t just changed the way we treat disease, they’ve transformed how we understand ourselves and the world we live in. In Breakthrough! How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World, Jon Queijo tells the hidden stories behind history’s most amazing medical discoveries. This isn’t dry history: These are life-and-death mysteries uncovered, tales of passionate, often-mocked individuals who stood their ground and were proven right. From germs to genetics, the ancient Hippocrates to the cutting edge, these are stories that have changed the world–and, quite likely, saved your life.

• File Size: 1004 KB
• Print Length: 297 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0137137486
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
• Publisher: FT Press; 1 edition (February 25, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003B02ONW
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #330,206 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #32 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Basic Science > Genetics
  • #59 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Research

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 dont. 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 dont know is that there are many different types of penicillin, and only one has the magic anti-baterial properties. You also dont know that there was a particular and improbable temperature change required for the penicillin to be effective at all. Finally, you dont know that there was no penicillin spores of the effective type anywhere on the floor of Listers lab, so how did it get there? Queijo knows it all and he tells the story well.

He also knows why inventors 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 dont. 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 doesnt 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.