What was it like to be that patient caught in a medical crisis that sparked a medical milestone? First Patients reads with the pace and excitement of a top-notch medical thriller, providing an enthralling view into the history of medicine and revealing the extent of human inventiveness, resilience, and compassion.
Often marked by the desperate need to save human lives, developments in medicine have invariably started with patients—people whose ordeals fostered the advancement of medical knowledge. This book is a collection of such incredible true stories of pioneer patients, from an 18th century farmer who became the first vaccinator, to a doctor in the 1980s who drank a beaker of bacteria to prove the cause of peptic ulcers, and many more.
