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Authors

Emilee Bell

Keywords

Outstanding, Intermediate, Young Adult, Non-fiction, reference, medical, history, science, research, discovery, technology, global

Document Type

Book Review

Abstract

Beware of whiplash as you track the evolution of medicine across the globe from the ice age to 2016. Remedies are lost and rediscovered during the rise and fall of empires; unsavory research begets groundbreaking health practices; knowledge is stolen, borrowed, given, distorted, and built upon through flurries of epidemics, religious mania, and superstition. The book shows a glimpse behind the Chamberlen Family shroud of secrecy that hid nothing less than the original forceps, passed down from generation to generation of highly successful birthing doctors in the 1600s. Readers will learn of an Italian study to the coast where a disgusting amount of sewage flowed into the ocean, yet students swam in the area frequently and never became sick—another example of how mold in its natural habitat served as a eureka moment for more than one scientist. Dive into the foundations of the common sense we take for granted and glimpse the trajectory of the future of medicine in the fifty discoveries between these pages.

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