Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 157912156X, Hardcover)

This amazing visual overview walks readers through the history of medical discoveries year-by-year from crude early techniques to cutting-edge modern treatments. The illustrated timetable offers parallel chronologies of the developments in public health, disease, diagnosis, treatment, surgery, healers and teachers, medical science and inventions as they happened. Key concurrent world events are also noted for historical context. Each decade is indicated at the top of the full-color timetable. Underneath, pictures and short descriptions show the advances and breakthroughs that occurred all over the world at that time, allowing readers the unique opportunity to trace medical developments chronologically. For example, in the 1920s column, readers will see that in the U.S. scientists developed a vaccine against TB, in France the iron lung was invented and in Germany the first successful pregnancy test was administered. The wealth of engaging information is broken-up into small vignettes providing an overview of the advances of medical science and relating specific stories about discoveries and personalities of particular interest.