Paul Strathern follows the development of medicine through the lives of its greatest practitioners, whose discoveries (and errors) shaped the course of medical history. This title includes geniuses, such as Paracelsus, the father of medical chemistry, and Edward Jenner, whose vaccination banished smallpox, scientific endeavour, such as the discovery of X-rays, and mistakes both fortunate and fatal. With grave robbing, plague and germ theory, quackery, nursing, syphilis, micro-organisms and penicillin along the way, this is the ultimate story of human - and humane - achievement.