The Medicine Book

Description

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE PREHISTORY TO 1600 A shaman to combat disease and death A healer of one disease and no more The balance of the doshas is freedom from disease We rebuild what fortune has taken away First, do no harm A body in balance Nature itself is the best physician To diagnose, one must observe and reason Know the causes of sickness and health Learned, expert, ingenious, and able to adapt The vampire of medicine Wars have furthered the progress of the healing art The art of prescribing lies in nature Teach not from books but from dissections THE SCIENTIFIC BODY 1600–1820 The blood is driven into a round A disease known is half cured Hope of a good, speedy deliverance The harvest of diseases reaped by workers The peculiar circumstances of the patient To restore the sick to health as speedily as possible Great and unknown virtue in this fruit The bark of a tree is very efficacious Surgery has become a science The dangerously wounded must be tended first A peculiarity in my vision No longer feared, but understood Training the immune system Like cures like To hear the beating of the heart CELLS AND MICROBES 1820 –1890 Let healthy blood leap into the sick man Soothing, quieting, and delightful beyond measure Wash your hands Medicine needs men and women All cells come from cells They mistook the smoke for the fire A hospital should do the sick no harm Disturbances at the cellular level Make yourselves masters of anatomy One must replace the scarring tissue Life is at the mercy of these minute bodies A genetic misprint It is from particles that all the mischief arises The field of vital phenomena Defense against intruders A single mosquito bite is all it takes VACCINES, SERUMS, AND ANTIBIOTICS 1890 –1945 Solving the puzzle of cancer The darker shadow of the bones Viruses are alpha predators Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious It must be a chemical reflex The action currents of the heart Strings of flashing and traveling sparks A peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex Magic bullets Unknown substances essential for life An invisible, antagonistic microbe A weakened form of the germ To imitate the action of the pancreas No woman is free who does not own her body Marvelous mold that saves lives New windows into the brain Silent disease can be found early GLOBAL HEALTH 1945 –1970 We defend everyone’s right to health The artificial kidney can save a life Nature’s dramatic antidote The quietening effect A psychic penicillin Changing the way you think A new diagnostic dimension All the cells had 47 chromosomes Death becomes life A promising but unruly molecule A sensation for the patient The center of our immune response The power to decide Asking for proof of safety A return to function Smoking kills Help to live until you die GENES AND TECHNOLOGY 1970 ONWARD Randomize till it hurts Seeing inside the body Antibodies on demand Nature could not, so we did Victory over smallpox Our fate lies in our genes This is everybody’s problem A revolution through the keyhole The first glimpse of our own instruction book Fixing a broken gene The power of light Hope for new therapies Smaller is better The barriers of space and distance have collapsed Public health enemy number one To reprogram a cell This is my new face DIRECTORY GLOSSARY INDEX QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS