The Masters of Medicine

by Andrew Lam

An in-depth look at the mavericks, moments, and mistakes that sparked the greatest medical discoveries in modern times—plus the cures that will help us live longer and healthier lives in this century . . . and beyond.

Human history hinges on the battle to confront our most dangerous enemies—the half-dozen diseases responsible for killing almost all of mankind. And while the story of our triumphs over these afflictions reveals an inspiring tapestry of human achievement, the journey was far from smooth.

In The Masters of Medicine, Dr. Andrew Lam distills the long arc of medical progress down to the crucial moments that were responsible for the world’s greatest medical miracles.

Discover fascinating true stories of scientists and doctors throughout history, including:

• Rival surgeons who killed patient after patient in their race to operate on beating hearts—and put us on the path toward the heart transplant
• A quartet of Canadians whose miraculous discovery of insulin was marred by jealousy and resentment
• The doctors who discovered penicillin, but were robbed of the credit
• The feud between two Americans in the quest for the polio vaccine
• A New York surgeon whose “heretical” idea to cure patients by deliberately infecting them has now inspired our next-best hope to defeat cancer
• A Hungarian doctor who solved the greatest mystery of maternal deaths in childbirth, only to be ostracized for his discovery

The Masters of Medicine is a fascinating chronicle of human courage, audacity, error, and luck. This riveting ode to mankind reveals why the past is prelude to the game-changing breakthroughs of tomorrow.

Genres: Medicine, Science, Nonfiction, Medical, History, Audiobook, Health

368 pages, Hardcover

Published April 18, 2023

About the author

Andrew Lam, M.D. is the award-winning author of The Masters of Medicine, Saving Sight, Two Sons of China, and Repentance. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post. He is a retinal surgeon with a history degree from Yale and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Dr. Lam's first book, Saving Sight (Irie Books 2013), about his work as an eye surgeon, was an Amazon bestseller. His first novel, Two Sons of China, (Bondfire Books 2014) won a Forewords Reviews Book of the Year award in 2014. His latest novel, Repentance (Tiny Fox Press 2019), is a Japanese American WWII family drama closely entwined with the history of the highly decorated Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Reviews

[David Parkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. So many cool stories. The chapters on antibiotics and childbirth were my favorites.

And I was all about the petty drama between the doctors. I love how the author gives excerpts from their journals & letters to each other. Such a creative way to approach a medical history book. The Louis Pasteur-Robert Koch rivalry was crazy. Who knew discovering bacteria would be such a controversial topic in the 1800s. Also thought it was crazy that the first vaccine ever was tested on a healthy 8-year-old boy & then to see if it worked they just injected him with some otherwise lethal smallpox.

My main beef was the audiobook narrator. He pronounced so many things wrong & was over the top with the constantly dramatic tone in his voice.

[India M. Clamp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Lam is overflowing with titles when it comes to professions. He has talent for excellence across disciplines: Ophthalmology, Retinal Surgery and Historian. He additionally is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

“There was no chest pain. No fatal arrhythmia. No fainting. For the first time, a doctor had shown that the inviolate inner sanctum of the heart could be plumbed without killing the patient. Now using catheters…”
—Andrew Lam, M.D.

Accolades are given to persons in his specialty who persevered---through ungodly conditions. Werner Forssmann was instrumental in imbuing him with materials allowing him to catheterize his own heart in developing cardiac catheterization. The stories revealing the humanity underlying the work to resolve each of the a plethora a medical challenges. Do read this one.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I found the stories compelling and the tone conversational. I liked that the book looked at only a few areas but covered them thoroughly. Everything was very well explained, with case studies adding even more clarity. But the book is not a paean to the people who made these discoveries. The book is very good at showing the dark side of these masters. All this made the book genuinely hard to put down. I think that this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of medicine. Thank you to Netgalley and BenBella Books for the digital review copy.

[sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super informative and interesting! My favs were the discovery of insulin and how plastic surgery came to be . Although it was all amazing !

[Valentina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting to see the development of medicine and a little bit of the history and coincidences that occured to be on such a high medicine level as of today. Serendipity took a big part on all these fantastic developments and yet there is so much more to come, although the big questions of ethnicity make the research and testing far more difficult than the last 100 years, yet of course its for good - or is it stopping us from excel to even further medical practices? Thats for you to decide ;)

[katie reynolds wilbanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

probs a 4.5. was itching for a nonfiction medical-related book. this is a story (or collection of stories) of humanity, perseverance, and serendipity as medical mavericks discover and cure some of humankind’s deadliest afflictions. very educational, inspiring (though a bit repetitive at times), and overall a worthwhile read!

[For The Novel Lovers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review
Title: The Masters of Medicine: Our Greatest Triumphs in the Race to Cure Humanity's Deadliest Diseases by Andrew Lam M.D.
Genre: Non-Fiction, Science, Medicine
Rating: 5 Stars
In this book Dr. Andrew Lam looks at some of the most ground-breaking discoveries in modern medicine, which sounded intriguing to me. The introduction was well laid out with Lam’s goal being to walk us through these discoveries and introduces us to the people behind them, starting with the mavericks behind the advances in cardiac medicine.
Chapter 1 looks at heart disease because even today it is the biggest killer, more than all forms of cancer combined, even with our medical advances. The first person we look at is James Herrick who believed in 1913 that sudden deaths he was observed were caused by heart attacks but this wouldn’t be recognised until 1918. This was termed myocardial infarction and later in 1929, Werner Forssmann created the heart catheter which he experimented on himself. Dr. Mason Sones further this developed by finding that contrast dyes could be used for heart imaging. In 1963 Charles Dotter and Dr. Melvin Judkins used catheters of increasing size to remove blockages in arteries which was further developed into the balloon catheter by Andreas Grüntzig. In May 1977, Grüntzig and Myler performed the world’s first successful coronary balloon angioplasty on a patient undergoing coronary bypass. Many wouldn’t believe that the first heart operation was perform in 1896 by Ludwig Rehn but many still believed that damage to the heart was fatal since they didn’t have any way of stopping the heart.
In 1944, Dwight Harken performed heart repairs on wounded soldiers while their hearts will still beating and he made it his mission to treat mitral stenosis. The following year Charles Bailey attempts this very procedure unsuccessfully while William Mustard and Walt Lillehei began trying to oxygenate blood outside the body. Their initial experiments were unsuccessful but they were on the right track. They were ultimately successful a handful of times but the amount of deaths caused overshadowed this. Their work was continued by John Gibbon as he was trying to remove blood clots without killing the patient. He ended up creating a prototype heart-lung bypass machine which was funded by Thomas Watson, the CEO of IBM. On May 6, 1953, the first successful operation was performed using the heart-lung bypass system. Within eight years, the first coronary artery bypass graft operation (CABG) had been performed and later on December 3, 1967, surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant.
Chapter 2 looks at diabetes which is the 8th biggest killer in the USA today. Diabetes was the first time in history people were dying from eating too much instead of too little. Diabetes affected more than 422 million people worldwide which is around 10% of the population. The link between diabetes and pancreas was confirmed in 1889 by German physicians Oskar Minkowski and Josef von Merin but wasn’t investigated further until 1920. In 1920, Dr. Frederick Banting wanted to isolate the pancreas secretions to see if it helped diabetes and was helped by John Macleod and Charles Best. Banting and Best succeed in isolating insulin and treated dogs but they needed to perfect their method to harvest the secretions easily. They were joined by James Bertram Collip who helped them increase the purity of their compound creating what we know as insulin today. Insulin became available to the public in limited quantities but the results spoke for themselves as families witness their loved ones regain their health in a matter of days.
Banting and Macleod were awarded a Nobel Prize which they shared with Best and Collip. Banting’s greatest desire was for insulin to be produced inexpensively and made available to all patients, rich and poor which is something I greatly admire. In modern society, diabetes is still a big problem as a study from Finland shows a 34% concordance rate for identical twins to develop type 2 diabetes meaning there might be a genetic factor as well as lifestyle factor. Further advances were made in 1967 by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin who used X-ray diffraction to determine insulin’s precise chemical structure. This meant in 1978, Genentech, the pioneering biotechnology company, was the first to produce synthetic insulin which was approved for human use in 1982. Even today, in November 2021, advances are still being made as the first patient to receive stem cell–derived islet cells was cured of type 1 diabetes.
Chapter 3 focuses on bacterial infections, which has been debated a lot throughout history and seems to be an interesting chapter. In 1940, Albert Alexnader got a serious bacterial infection from shrapnel and was near death when he was offered and experimental medicine and although it was successful in part, he would later die from sepsis. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to identify bacterial microorganisms, he learnt that bacteria could be classified based on shape and colour when dyed. The Gram Stain was devised by Hans Christian Gram in 1884 and this led to two competing beliefs that claimed to explain the spread of disease. Contagionists believed that disease was passed via personal contact which were later labelled germs. They believed they had to separate sick people from healthy in quarantines, while anti-contagionists believed the environment was more blameworthy than human contact. They believed that miasmas or bad air caused illness and that the best way to combat an epidemic was to clean up squalid streets in order to properly cleanse the air.
While the second belief did lead to proper sewage systems and better hygiene, it was John Snow in 1854 who realised that cholera, a major problem at the time, was a water-borne illness. His discovery was used to support contagionists’ “germ theory” of disease and 1856, Louis Pasteur discovered microorganisms souring wine. He ordered contaminated casks to be destroyed and realised that these microorganisms could be killed with heat later called pasteurisation, a method still used today. Robert Koch, a bacteriologist was Pasteur’s nemesis and later events would lead to a war between the two. In, 1873, an anthrax outbreak was caused by spores of dormant bacilli that didn’t die with heat. Koch determined the lifecycle of the disease and asked Ferdinand Cohn to review his experiment before publishing, thus proved germ theory was true. Pasteur in 1879, took on a new investigation—an epidemic of chicken cholera and found that old cultures didn’t kill injected chicken as the pathogenic microorganisms lost ability to cause disease, due to time and oxygen exposure.
Pasteur had accidentally discovered vaccination, due to this Pasteur isolated the anthrax microbe and weakened it using potassium dichromate and heat and on May 5, 1881, he initiated a public test. This test was successful and in 1882, 85,000 animals were vaccinated in France, decreasing mortality due to anthrax from 9.01 percent to 0.65 percent. At the same time, Koch was studying tuberculosis and isolated it. Koch was critical of Pasteur’s work and in August 1883, Koch discovered the source of cholera giving him the edge over his rival. However, Pasteur studied rabies and created a vaccine. In July 6, 1885, he treated a young boy bitten by a rabid dog which was a success and by October 1886, 2,500 people had received the vaccine. Koch tried to cure TB and failed but his work was carried on by Paul Ehrlich working with Emil von Behring, a scientist with an interest in diphtheria and alongside Shibasaburo Kitasato. They found blood of diphtheria patients contained a toxin produced by bacteria and it was this toxin not bacteria responsible for disease. They also discovered that animals produce antitoxins and these were used to cure animals, from this they began trying to create antitoxins for humans. First humans received antitoxins in 1892 but another discovery was made.
Paul Ehrlich found dyes stained and killed bacteria and in 1909 began working with Sahachiro Hata. Hata found a dye that killed the bacteria that caused syphilis which worked in animals and humans, the drug was named Salvarsan. This was a major turning point in medicine and in 1928, Fleming embarked on a study of staphylococcus where he discovered penicillin but there wasn’t much interest in it at the time. In 1938, Howard Florey was working on sulfonamides that had been developed in oral medicine but he aimed from more powerful medicines. He began working with Ernst Chain and they came across Fleming’s work with penicillin. Together with Norman Heatley, they worked to create more of the secretions which continued through the war. Eventually, they had a form of penicillin pure enough for testing which worked well in mice but the war overshadowed their achievements. They did treat several people successfully but they needed a large scale production method and ended up in North America to see Warren Weaver. Penicillin came to the market in mass during the war but there were issues of credit to be given since Fleming discovered it but others had put in more work.
All the men were eventually credited for their roles in the discovery and creation of modern penicillin but antibiotic resistance becoming a major problem even then. Overuse of antibiotics dramatically hastens this process by wiping out the weak and the vulnerable, allowing survivors to gain increased dominance. One study of antibiotic prescriptions written in the U.S. in 2010–2011 estimated that approximately 30% were unwarranted.
Chapter 4 look at viral infections with the Polio epidemic which many had been exposed young due to poor sanitation and thus developed immunity. Polio was though to be caused by bacteria but this was disproven in 1908 by Austrian physicians Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper. The Virus theory was supported by Simon Flexner and Paul Lewis and in the 1930s the advent of the electron microscope would make viruses visible for the first time. The 1916 epidemic caused 27,000 cases of paralysis and 6,000 deaths and in New York City alone, there were 8,900 cases and 2,400 deaths. 80% of victims were children younger than five, including many babies and in August 1921, Franklin Delano Roosevelt developed polio and he would never walk again. The National Foundation was founded by Roosevelt and funded multi-decade research effort to combat polio as they needed a vaccine. The progress for this vaccine was actually made due to an outbreak of smallpox, where Edward Jenner learnt that cowpox wasn’t fatal like smallpox and those who got cowpox would only develop a mild form of smallpox and recover or not catch it at all. He infected a boy with cowpox who recovered and then infected him with smallpox, but he didn’t get ill. Vaccination was quickly adopted and virology’s pioneers did not know they were working in a field that would be called immunology.
In the 1930s, Max Theiler and Hugh Smith, were studying yellow fever and found with each passage through culture, the virus became weaker and caused less severe disease. They theorised that we had an innate immune system, which we are born with, and the acquired immune system, which is influenced by pathogens we encounter throughout our lives. The acquired, “specific” immune system is pertinent to the study of vaccines and found that successful attenuated-virus vaccines could be used. However, these vaccines could not be weakened so much that it loses its antigenicity, which is its ability to be recognized as a pathogen by the acquired immune system. During this time polio was becoming more of an issue, in 1946, there were 25,000 polio cases in the United States, in 1949, 42,000 cases and by 1952, there were 58,000 cases. Jonas Salk who studied influenza during the war, turned his attention to polio and believed a killed-virus vaccine would be the most realistic strategy for success with polio despite the fact that a live-virus vaccine would produce lifelong immunity by replicating a natural infection in the body. It was believed that poliovirus entered the nasal passages and travelled straight to the central nervous system but this was debunked by Albert Sabin in 1941.
Sabin discovered that the digestive tract was the mode of entry for poliovirus and started a typing program would last for three years, from 1949 to 1951 where three types of polio were identified. In 1948, John Enders and two assistants, Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins, were working to grow chicken pox, in cultures of foetal muscle and skin tissue and tested same process on polio and found it thrived in the muscle and skin tissue. While these discoveries were being made, Salk and Sabin warred over the correct course for the vaccine. The first vaccine was developed by Salk and testing began in June 1952. In January 1953, Salk reported his study results at a conference of prominent virologists but the safety of his vaccine was questioned. In November 1953, the National Foundation’s Vaccine Advisory Board voted to embark on a large study of Salk’s vaccine and the vaccine trial of 1954 was the largest medical study in history to date.
Salk’s vaccine was safe and essentially 80-90% effective but there was an issue with one manufacturer. Cutter was not properly adhering to the strict safety protocols leading to its vaccine being pulled as polio numbers continued to decline. Sabin continued to pursue a live, attenuated-virus vaccine by targeting the digestive tract with an oral vaccine would also eliminate passive transfer of the poliovirus. During the winter of 1954–1955, Sabin tested his vaccine in thirty inmates at a prison where all survived and developed antibodies. Sabin went to the Soviet Union because many in US had been vaccinated already and because Soviets had difficulty with Salk’s vaccine due to a shortage of glass syringes. In 1961, Sabin’s vaccine was officially licensed for use in the U.S. and supplanted Salk’s vaccine nationwide, between 1952 to 1981 paralysis from polio per 100,000 people dropped from 13.7 to 0.003 but it didn’t eradicate polio. It was decided to give combined vaccines and in 2000, the CDC switched fully to the use of the Salk vaccine. Lam does go into corona virus but my thoughts on this are clear in other reviews so I am not going to discuss it here, if you want to know my thoughts see Slaying the Virus and Vaccine Dragon.
Chapter 5 focuses on cancer which is something that many of us will suffer with even today. Approximately 1.9 million Americans receive the bad news that they have cancer, 21% of deaths in the United States are due to cancer and it will eventually kill one out of every three of us. By 1938, cancer had risen to become the second most prolific killer in the US and we have to remember that cancer is a term that describes more than a hundred different diseases although all generally stem from the same fundamental problem, unwanted cell division. In 1971, the war on cancer began with William Halsted who developed operations for range of conditions, including hernias, aneurysms, and diseases of the thyroid and gallbladder. He reasoned that cancer likely spread directly outward from the tumour and in 1894, would pioneer what would become known as the radical mastectomy. The following year, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered that X-rays could be used to treat cancer but it was Émil Grubbé, who first used radiation to treat a local tumour in 1896. Pierre and Marie Curie recognized radium’s promise as a new way to treat cancer and Stewart Alexander found mustard gas lowered white blood cell count and again theorised it could be used to treat cancer.
Alexander’s work was noticed by Colonel Cornelius Rhoads and in 1944, Rhoads organized a classified clinical trial of 160 cancer patients who were treated with nitrogen mustard, a derivative of the chemical used in mustard gas. This produced positive results in patients with lymphoma and in 1949, became the first cancer chemotherapy medication. Sidney Farber was a huge figure in the field as he saw childhood leukemia was death sentence and was inspired by Lucy Wills. Wills had corrected blood production in patients by giving them folic acid and Yellapragada Subbarao supplied Farber with a folic acid antagonist molecule, a medicine that would later be called aminopterin. On December 28, 1947, Farber used this on a young boy, his white cell count, which had risen as high as 60,000 per microliter dropped, into the normal range within three days. In a 1948 article, he reported that ten of the first sixteen patients he treated benefited from temporary remissions and helped establish the Children’s Cancer Research Fund in 1948.
By 1951, two biochemists George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion synthesized a new compound called 6-mercaptopurine which could inhibit cellular DNA function and cell division. In 1952, Clark Noble received a sample of the periwinkle plant which significantly reduced white blood cell production and became an effective cancer chemotherapeutic drug named vinblastine. These were the first of a new class of chemotherapeutic agents termed alkaloids. Emil Frei and Emil J. Freireich had been treating leukemic patients with two drugs, the children suffered greatly, but there was a definite increase in remission duration. They increased this to four drugs commonly called VAMP. Many considered VAMP to be not only unethical but unconscionably cruel but it had a 60% achieved remission rate. In 1975, the five-year survival rate for childhood leukemia had risen to 53%, by 1963, the all-cancer five-year survival rate in the United States was approximately 37%. A 1986 study revealed that cancer deaths were not decreasing in the United States, in fact, they had increased by 8.7% between 1962 and 1982.
In the 1930s urologist, Charles Huggins studied the prostate glands of dogs and wondered if diminishing testosterone might have a beneficial impact on prostate cancer. He found that some cancers could be influenced by hormones. This had been seen back in 1896 when George Beatson observed that removing the ovaries of women with breast cancer led to reduction of the size of their tumours. Later, drugs like tamoxifen, an estrogen antagonist were shown in 1971 to effectively reduce both breast tumours and lung metastases. In 2004, the first FDA-approved anti-angiogenesis drug hit the market and Avastin is used to treat colon cancer, as well as malignancies of the lung, kidney, and brain.
read more at forthenovellovers dot uk

[Vijay Menon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book for both those in health care and those who aren’t. Focusing on various facets of medicine and surgery the author takes us through the inception of the idea all the way to modern day. Fascinating to see the rivalries and Nobel prizes and the evolution of treatments.

[Maryann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly enjoyed reading The Masters of Medicine as each chapter was a different description of the history and evolution of a condition or etiology. Woven through each one was an interesting and informative case study. Lam's explanations of concepts were thorough and clear.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book full of history, forgotten stories and a unique view of this doctor author. I think everyone will enjoy this non-fiction medical history. Highly recommended

[Duaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتابٌ رائع.

اعتقدت قبل أن أبدأ قراءته أنه سيتحدث عن مجال الطب منذ بداية الحضارة لكنه خيّب بعضًا من آمالي إذ ركّز في معظمه على المئتي عامٍ الأخيرة وعلى العلوم التي نُشرت في مجلات الغرب وأبحاثهم بشكلٍ حصري، متجاهلًا المعارف الأولى في عالم الطب في بقية العالم وأُخص بها ما أعرفه من ازدهاراتٍ في العلم والصحة في العصر الذهبي للإسلام؛ إذ يوافق التاريخ والمؤرخون أنه بينما كان الغرب يعيش عصوره المظلمة التي انتشرت بها الأوبئة والأمراض، كان المجال الصحي والعناية الصحية لدى المسلمين من أفضل ما يكون.

هذا كان أول ما رغبت في التحدث عنه، لكن غير ذلك الكتاب كان شيقًا بالفعل، اختيار مواضيع الفصول وترتيبها كان رائعًا، فيبدأ فصله الأول بالتحدث عن القلب الذي يعد نقطة حيويةً مهمة في جسد الإنسان يخشى أي طبيب أن يلمسه؛ فأي خطأ بسيط يعني الموت المحتم، وأكثر ما أذهلني بدهشة طالب العلم المبهرة هو صلابة الأطباء النفسية واستعدادهم وقتها لأن يخوضوا تجارب العلاج على أنفسهم وعلى مرضى إما أن يموتوا من المرض أو يُقتلوا أثناء تجربة جديدة للعلاج تُجرى على قلوبهم.

ثمّ تحدث عن مرض السكري إحدى أكثر الأمراض انتشارًا في العصر الحاليّ، وعن حتميّة الموت التي كانت تُرافق أيًا من كان يُشخّص بهذا المرض سابقًا حتى لحظة اكتشاف الإنسولين وتصنيعه كدواء يُنقذ حياة ملايين الأطفال.

وباقي الفصول الأخرى، كالعدوى الفيروسية والبكتيرية تلك الميكروبات الصغيرة ذات الحجم المجهري التي كانت تغزو الجسد ما أن تدخل فيه وتسلّمه سريعًا لموتٍ مدمّر؛ قبل أن تُكتشف المضادات الحيوية وتُنشأ التطعيمات الكثيرة وقايةً ضدّها.

ومرض السرطان العدوّ الذي كلما خاض العلماء فيه وتعلموا عنه أكثر كلما عمّق فيهم مدى جهلهم ومحدوديّة علمهم وقدراتهم البشرية.

واختتمهم بالولادة التي من خلالها تكبر الحضارات وتنمو، وعن المخاطر الكبيرة التي كانت تواجه الأم وطفلها فيما مضى، فتدخل الواحدة منهم وهي لا تدري هل ستنجو هي وطفلها أم ستسرق مضاعفات الولادة حياتهم.

تحدث عن غطرسة الأطباء والعلماء السابقين، عن تكبرهم في قبول أي علمٍ جديد يخالف آرائهم، عن طمع بعضهم في الشهرة، وتنافسهم بين بعضهم البعض، وعدم توانيهم عن السخرية وعزل أي طبيبٍ لا يسير على ذات خُطاهم، وعن الوفيات والمضاعفات الكثيرة التي تسبب بها ضعفهم الإنساني هذا.

كتابٌ يثير الاهتمام، استمتعتُ بقراءته.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I have read in years. First, the writing is very engaging. Lam has a great way of making scientific concepts accessible to everyday readers and this was a real page turner. Second, the stories in this book are incredible. Each chapter covers a specific disease and contains stories of pioneering doctors and scientists who persevered to make breakthroughs that benefit all of us today.

I don’t want to give away spoilers but there are many unforgettable stories like the discovery of cardiac catheterization by doctors who risked their own lives to catheterize themselves, made serendipitous mistakes that led to lucky advances, or spent decades working on figuring out how to stick a balloon on a catheter to perform angioplasty. I also loved learning about the rivalries and sometimes adolescent behavior of the discoverers of insulin (Frederick Banting and J.R.R. Macleod), Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, and Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin.

There are also wonderful cases from American history that emphasize the importance of the medical advances, such as the assassination of James Garfield, and the treatment of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney. This book is perfect for history buffs and anyone who has ever been a patient or has had a loved one with heart disease or cancer. Also anyone who has been pregnant, had surgery, or has had to take antibiotics. I love it for students and young adults as well. It’s a perfect book club choice and I feel much more knowledgable about my own health after reading this. Highest recommendation!

[Abbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this as a review copy from NetGallery and thoroughly enjoyed the book overall. Lam's writing style is engaging and he has a way of being able to distill very complex medical interventions into digestible and understandable ways. It was fascinating to see the great lengths and risks that innovators went to in order to progress the science forward in a way that ultimately benefitted countless lives.

The one critique that I have for the book was how incredibly white Western focused it was. While medical discoveries outside of Europe and America are mentioned off-hand, none of these innovations or innovators were held up as mavericks in similar ways. For instance when discussing the invention of inoculations for smallpox, there was no mention of similar innovations happening in Africa before Jenner's "discovery". There is also very little mention of the massive toll on African and African American people to push forward these innovations. There is mention of this in the chapter on childbirth, but in reality exploitation of Black and Brown bodies has been a theme of medical mavericks throughout the centuries, which was an acknowledgement that I found missing in the book. These missing pieces were the only reason I could not give this book a five star rating.

[Alex Rosenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. It spoke a lot about areas of the history of medicine which I wasn’t too familiar with. Spoke a lot about epidemiology, microbiology, cancer, surgery, and obstetrics which was really cool. I do wish more was written about William Halsted since he was a pioneer in the field of surgery, but it was cool to learn about other figures. I didn’t know much about Louis Pasteur before this so it was interesting to learn about his hand in pasteurization of milk and the discovery of Pasteurella.

Another cool point I learned: “Ignorance is Bliss” comes from the hubris and ignorant-driven medical treatment of President James A. Garfield by Dr. Willard Bliss who refused to consider infection the cause of Garfield’s deterioration of health. Also the word “Vaccination” comes from the Spanish word “Vaca” meaning cow because the first vaccination was for smallpox made from cowpox.

All around great book. I loved Dr. Lam’s writing, and I would love to read another book of his about the history medicine.

[JournalsTLY]

Very detailed yet readable book - almost like going through the Hall of Fame for pioneers of medicine.

But also about the horrors of how some of these pioneers bickered and poked at each other ‘s work and egos. The accounts of Salk and Sabin noteworthy .

A hero to highlight - a researcher cycling to collect the urine from patient who was given pencilling so that they can extract the precious penicillin and recycle that for use.

A sad case of care givers burnt at the stake because their efforts at caring for a birthing mother was considered to be witchcraft .

Recurring lesson - how swimming pools were closed and children kept indoors - not Covid but polio . And already there were “anti” people who oppose actions ; just as there were earlier opposition to washing hands despite evidence that contagion was deadly .

And the way ahead - will those who push forward with genetic and precision medicine be “burnt at the stake “, be patent millionaires or be true heroes .

[Joe Bullock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Stephen Jay Gould did for evolutionary biology and Oliver Sacks for neurological disorders, Dr. Lam’s writing has an engaging, narrative style that presents complex medical topics in a way that is both entertaining and informative to a wide audience. In The Masters of Medicine, Lam examines seven factors affecting human mortality: heart disease, diabetes, bacterial infection, viral infection, cancer, trauma, and childbirth. Each of these has a chapter devoted to them describing their impact on health and life expectancy, the historic advances in medicine used to combat them, and the pioneering scientists and medical practitioners who made those interventions possible. Lam merges historical narrative, and clinical anecdote, creating vignettes that are deftly woven together to tell fascinating tales of medicine’s triumphs against the frailties of the human body.

[Justin Bergner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book, because it showcases 1) how much progress society has made in battling all the major virulent conditions (along the lines of Yuval Harari's famous quote on humanity having mostly solved famine, plague, and war to our betterment), and 2) how the medical culture at times inhibited progress. The book connected with me, as I (and most of us) know someone who has succumbed to or survived one of the maladies covered in the book. Ultimately the message is an uplifting one, as we enjoy the opportunity today to live a long and healthy life on account of medical advances. The sometimes complex material is presented is a user friendly, storytelling manner, which makes it quite accessible.

[KRafferty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Lam's book on the history of some of the more devastating diseases that face mankind is simply fabulous. The history of the people involved in researching and discovering cures for heart disease, diabetes, viruses, bacterias and more is told in an informative and entertaining way. The author includes many details of how our vaccines were developed, how surgeries were perfected, how the personalities of the women and men who gave their careers to finding ways to help eradicate or at the very least help alleviate the worst of illnesses and how sometimes these doctors and researchers came into conflict. The Masters of Medicine is hard to put down. I purchased copies for everyone in my family! I highly recommend this important book.

[Patricia Ibarra · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a book about medical progress, careful research, and unforeseen findings that have shaped and changed our lives when needing medical care. We seldom give thought to these discoveries as we have lived with them all our lives and take them for granted. This wonderful book explains how difficult medical change is, how the whole lives of researchers were devoted to finding what they had in mind, and how others were lucky enough to discover wonderful things accidentally. I cannot imagine what our lives would be like without vaccines, antibiotics, anesthesia, and X-rays, among many other discoveries. I was amazed at everything I learnt from this book and grasped the importance all this work has had for our lives and has taken us to the modern world.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Lam does a deep dive into seven fields of medicine: Heart Disease, Diabetes, Bacterial Infection, Viral Infection, Cancer, Trauma, and Childbirth. In each section, anecdotal histories are shared and then initial discoveries ("mavericks") and a timeline of happenings, which includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. I appreciate the candor of the research told. Lam doesn't hesitate to share the dark side of medical innovations while on a path to true treatments and prevention.

This book is suitable for anyone who wishes to learn about the human history in these fields, in addition to the scientific facts.

Thank you to #Netgalley for the ARC ebook.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
I think Dr. Lam does an excellent job of detailing many aspects of medical history in a succinct, relatable, and engaging way. His coverage of the numerous innovations that have shaped the field of medicine is well researched and amazingly organized. I think this is an absolutely excellent "jumping off" book for anyone who wants to dip their toes into the genre of medical non-fiction. I had previously read entire books on many of the topics that he covered and I believe that he did an excellent job of consolidating some rather complex topics into digestible bits, but would still recommend further exploration of these stories if readers are interested.

[William Yip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic book. I enjoyed reading the history of medical knowledge and procedures. It was interesting to note that most discoveries and innovations took place after the Scientific Revolution. It is amazing how people used to be afflicted with so much pain and misery such as children wasting away due to diabetes and iron lung disease, how rapidly experimentation was done during the World Wars, and how, after a mere century of progress, people survived what would have been fatal injuries. The author correctly pointed out the dilemma of using genetic engineering to not just remove disabilities but to also enhance offspring and the need to support future generations of researchers.

[Christopher Janowiec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science, great minds, and even sheer trial and error collectively tailored to an illuminating sense of nostalgia midst reading The Masters of Medicine. It set a relishing appreciation as you can sense the origins of those triumphs and embrace them to our everyday lives. It hinted and even left me to ponder; Who will be the next catalyst to foster such a courageous feat? Mixed with detailed research and gratitude for humanities gifts. Surely supplies a sense of wisdom and remembrance towards the recognition of the Masters in an honorable spark.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great follow up to Dr. Lam’s Saving Sight (which I also very highly recommend)! Insights once again into the history of medicine in an extremely practical manner that appeals to and informs both medical professionals and non-medical professionals alike. Dr. Lam is particularly gifted at discovering and highlighting aspects of medical history in a succinct, relatable, and gripping way. You will not typically find me reading medical history books, but these read more like novels that you can’t put down!

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fascinating book explores some of history's greatest medical breakthroughs. These inspiring true stories show how courage, error, and pure luck have advanced medical science. The author's engaging style draws the reader into a narrative that entertains and informs. Recommended for anyone interested in the history of medicine and where it might lead us next.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Sa Sa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Lam's book is an inspiring historical account of medicine's most important advances toward curing mankind's deadliest diseases. Written in a narrative style, the book grabs your attention from beginning to end as Dr. Lam brings the compelling personalities of the dedicated scientists and their extraordinary discoveries to life. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in medicine, science, research, innovation, history, or anyone looking for a fascinating read.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rendered me amazed, horrified, laughing, and grateful. Dr. Lam's research and winsome way of covering the medical conditions and clinical mavericks that preceded modern day medicine - made for a captivating read. Be sure to read the cardiology section of the book! Makes for great book club discussions!

[Noni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so different from the books I usually read, but it was beautifully written and held my interest through to the end. Dr Lam has a gift to be able to write about medical procedures and scientific discoveries that a layman can understand and enjoy. I thoroughly enjoyed the interesting information and highly recommend this book!!

[Ariel Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. This book is still accessible to anyone who even remotely remembers high school biology. Andrew Lam is a great writer. The stories he chose were essential and gripping, and his delivery is engaging and focused. At the end, the message he leaves for us is undoubtedly inspirational but also serves as a good summary of the book.

[Majel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reads like a mystery thriller, but it’s non-fiction. It is astonishing to read about the advances in medicine that we take for granted, ones that changed the world and happened in just the last hundred years. It’s organized by subject matter and every chapter is as jaw-dropping as the last. And the last part about current breakthroughs in gene editing is incredible