Customer Reviews

Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World (FT Press Science)

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a strong book and could have been a great one.

The basic idea is to outline how the ten greatest medical breakthroughs came about and the impact each of them had on humanity. Queijo is a fine writer and has a good eye for just how much detail he can include without losing the attention of non-scientists. In fact, I think this book can be read by people as young as their early teenage years.

Queijo has kept the book just about as jargon free as he can, and he has a great ear for the facts you think you know but don't. As an example, everyone knows how Joseph Lister, returning from vacation, discovered a mold in a dirty petri dish that killed the surrounding germs. That mold was penicillin.

However, what you don't know is that there are many different types of penicillin, and only one has the magic anti-baterial properties. You also don't know that there was a particular and improbable temperature change required for the penicillin to be effective at all. Finally, you don't know that there was no penicillin spores of the effective type anywhere on the floor of Lister's lab, so how did it get there? Queijo knows it all and he tells the story well.

He also knows why inventor's discovered effective anesthetic agents a half century before they were deployed, and why no one thought it was worth following up. Or that Gregor Mendel went to his deathbed knowing the importance of his genetic experiments, but was unable to convince anyone else of same.

These stories are all important and told with a riveting pace that reminds one of one of the finer whodunits.

Unfortunately, in the last chapter, he abandons all objectivity and names 'alternative medicine' as the tenth breakthrough, largely on the high rate of current usage by the public and the combination of several different alternative medicines into one category. Try as he might, he is not going to convince me that chiropractic techniques and homeopathic medicines are similar enough to be lumped into the same category. And it is interesting how he goes from compelling personal stories and brief statistics to prove his points with the first 9 breakthroughs, to long numerical tables showing public consumption of many different alternative medicines with the tenth.

To me this sounded like listing private label groceries as one of the most important breakthroughs in food because so many people prefer store-brands. Not very convincing.

He does wrap the book up with four lessons to take away from the history, and that is written well. Still, I was so excited about this book until I hit the final 'breakthrough.' I'll still recommend it to a few people, but fewer than I would have. As with so many recent books, the hand of a first rate editor could have really improved the product.

The author describes what he believes are the 10 greatest discoveries in medicine that have saved millions, etc. 9 of them are uncontroversial discoveries that have been on other top-10 lists, but his 10th choice is one that no other list of top discoveries has ever included. He realizes that, and even admits in his introduction that a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine refused to review his book because there is no such thing as alternative medicine, only treatments that work and treatments that don't. But he "respectfully disagrees."

Hippocrates' discovery that disease had natural causes, sanitation, germ theory, anesthesia, X-rays, vaccines, antibiotics, genetics, and treatments for mental disorders are all worthy candidates for the list. But Queijo ludicrously lists the "rediscovery of alternative medicine" as the tenth "great discovery." He presents no evidence (because there is no evidence) that alternative medicine has "saved millions" or that it has saved anyone. He doesn't realize that alternative medicine represents a betrayal of exactly the kind of rigorous scientific thinking and testing that led to all the other discoveries. His list of ten breakthroughs is actually a list of 9 breakthroughs and one breakdown.

He tells compelling human-interest stories about the discoveries. The complexities, the mis-steps, the near-misses, and the ups and downs make fascinating reading. He offers fascinating tidbits of historical information. He tells how, in the early days after the discovery of x-rays, Thomas Edison received a request to "Please send me one pound of X-rays and bill as soon as possible."

Most of the book is entertaining and informative, but in the chapter on alternative medicine, Queijo loses it entirely. He seems to think that modern medicine has become so fixated on diseases and technology that alternative medicine had to rediscover that diseases occur in people. He criticizes the reductionism of the scientific approach, but offers no evidence that a non-reductionist approach has ever resulted in discoveries or provided better patient outcomes. He sees the struggles between scientific medicine and alternative medicine as politically motivated turf wars rather than as efforts to establish the truth.

He accepts homeopathy uncritically and seems to think it is supported by science. He likes the idea of homeopathy because it "shares some underlying values seen in ancient traditional medicines" such as vitalistic energy concepts, detailed interviews to inquire into every detail of the patient's life, stressing the healer-patient relationship, and deriving many of its remedies from natural products.

He says, "Alternative medicine offered something Western medicine had too often abandoned: the view that every patient was an individual, that natural treatments were sometimes better than dramatic surgery and dangerous drugs; and that the essence of medicine begins with a caring relationship between healer and patient."

This is a straw man argument that badly mischaracterizes mainstream medicine, and it fails to show that alternative medicine has any advantage over scientific medicine practiced with judgment and empathy. He even goes as far as to accuse the stethoscope of being a nefarious device that distances practitioners from patients! He calls its invention "a dark omen for the terrible turn Western medicine was about to take." Now, really!

Much of this book is an eloquent paean to the value of science. Unfortunately, it abandons science in its discussion of alternative medicine. It deteriorates into apologetics for belief-based medicine based on misunderstandings and opinions rather than on any evidence. Alternative medicine represents a breakdown of the process that led to the real breakthroughs.

If you read this book, I recommend skipping chapter 10.

This book provides an overview of the most important developments in the history of medical science. Queijo is a journalist with a longstanding interest in medicine. In this book, he selects 10 developments in medical history, describes how they came about and details their impact on public health. The developments Queijo chose for this project include Hippocrates and his approach to scientific medicine, sanitation, germ theory, anesthesia, X-rays, vaccines, antibiotics, genetics, psychoactive medications, and alternative health care. In each chapter, Queijo provides a brief description of the historical context in which the development or discovery was made, often including case histories, then he identifies a series of "milestones", illustrating that these historic developments were not instantaneous discoveries, but rather long, often vitriolic processes, in which a series of crucial clues had to be uncovered, discussed, and further researched before being accepted as scientific truths or proper practices. End material includes a listing of the milestones and a list of references for further reading.

I found this book quite interesting as well as informative. Queijo's descriptions of key medical discoveries, while brief, include background details that aren't as well known as the popular myths that have grown up around such stories as Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin. What makes Queijo's accounts unique is that he stresses the long processes of discovery, and he emphasizes throughout the book that when evidence necessitating a paradigm shift is discovered, acceptance of the new ideas is not immediate, but rather takes many years and repeated efforts on the part of the researchers. Current practitioners may be extremely skeptical, and may never accept new approaches to old problems, despite the overwhelming evidence.

Although the book is quite well-written, Queijo's choice of the last two topics, psychoactive medicines and alternative health care seem a bit idiosyncratic and out of balance with the rest of the book. These topics are certainly important, but it's hard to see them as having the same magnitude of effects as the previous topics. Perhaps because these developments are still under way, their full impact is not yet apparent. If I were to enumerate my own choices of the 10 most important developments for medicine and public health, I would want to include the application of statistics and double-blind trials somewhere on the list, a topic that might subsume both psychoactive medicines and alternative health care. In any case, the book provides an informative and critical overview of medical history and the ethics of medical research.

This is a concise and selective history of medical advances, emphasizing the random and human elements over the science. The main value of the book, aside from picking up a little general history and science, is observing the interplay of social forces that create (or allow) a breakthrough. Time and again we see dogmatism, self-interest and conservatism supress the truth; yet we also see similar forces animating discoverers. There is plenty of observation, experiment, communication, debate and adoption of new methods, but not one example of a textbook progression from observation to adoption.

Several reviewers have complained about the grammar and writing style. James Skrydlak "mostlymozart" cites one example of a misplaced clause. It's blatant, but also unfair as there is only one other example in the entire book (two pages later). Skrydlak also didn't like the repitition. This comes from using quotes as subheds and then repeating them in the text. I agree that's annoying, the quotes are too long and the sections too short for this to be appropriate. But it only happens five times and I found no other objectionable repititiveness. My other objections are too many sentences start with conjunctions, including serial "buts," and italicized sections of made-up stories that are out of place even in a popular history. Despite these minor issues, the book is quite well-written overall in a casual style. It works in reasonably complex historical and scientific material seamlessly. I think most people will find the book a pleasure to read.

The bigger complaint of some reviewers is the last chapter on Alternative Medicine. Kaspars Melkis and a couple of other reviewers defended the chapter. I disagree with the defenses, Melkis writes, "Nowhere the author claims that homeopathy or other types of quackery are working. In fact, he clearly says that they don't. . ." While there's no clear claim that these things do work, there certainly is no clear refutation and the strong implication from the text is that these methods should be treated equally to scientific claims backed up by high-quality clinical trials and embedded in a consistent framework of analytic reasoning. The author even appears to accept the maternal impression explanation of heredity based on a deeply flawed statistical analysis (and that's not even in the last chapter).

On the other hand, I think the complaints are exaggerated. For one thing, the "alternative" techniques the author describes include massage, biofeedback, diet and exercise. The main application he discuses for the others is chronic pain relief. In that field, if the patient thinks it works, it works; and clearly many patients think alternative therapies work. In a few places the author goes a bit over the line in accepting [...] which is galling in a book celebrating scientific triumphs, but this chapter is nowhere near as bad as some critics claim.

The positive value of the tenth chapter is to illustrate the same forces at play as in the previous nine chapters. We see dogmatists and iconoclasts, arguments over evidence, competition for money and intellectual points and patients voting with their wallets. It's not enough to divide medical practitioners into good guys and quacks, it's important to understand how medical practice evolves, the sociology as well as the science, and why patients make the choices they do.

I think most of this objection to this chapter springs from a few artless phrases and a little too much credulity on the part of the author. With a bit of editing, or with a sympathetic reader, this can be a fine last chapter for a good book.

Jon Queijo has written an insightful, eye-opening, thoroughly researched book about the top ten medical discoveries or practices which we often take for granted but which have changed our world for the better in countless ways. This book is also a detailed review of the lives of many courageous individuals who dared to challenge the prevailing views of the times with their innovative experiments, insights, and outcomes that have become the norm or standard in modern times. The author used a brilliant tactic to narrow down his top ten list: he referred to the British Medical Journal which took a poll of its readers to name the top medical breakthroughs in the past 100 years. Having first done a google search of the term "medical breakthrough" and after receiving 2.1 million hits, the seemingly impossible task which loomed before him became much more realistic to approach and likely more enjoyable to write about.

What is especially impressive about this book is how the author fully engages the attention of the reader with each new subject via well organized chapters and subtopics he labels "milestones". Furthermore, he provides the right depth of detail for each topic, making the subject come alive leaving the reader to ponder each subject in awe and wonder and even to consider what our world woud be like *without* such a discovery, knowledge or practice. Rather than list each of the top ten medical breakthroughs, I encourage anyone who has an interest in medicine, health, and science to read this book. Young people especially those who wish to pursue a career in medicine, healthcare or biomedical research will be excited to learn about the impact of these discoveries on everyone who is alive! The author unravels many mysteries about the secrets of life and stimulates the reader to want to learn more and more ...Erika Borsos {pepper flower]

This book started a little slowly for me, with too many digressions and seemingly lack of a cohesive thread.

But as I continued, the writing became smoother.

Some people might prefer more of a "feature story" or "personality profile" approach. But I enjoyed the mix of personalities (e.g. Semmelweiss writing poison-pen letters scolding physicians who, like he before his epiphany, had killed women due to their ignorance about germs and chose to remain ignorant) and medical/scientific explanations.

It is a rare treat to find a book with an intriguing subject, an engrossing writer, and a well researched topic. In Breakthrough, we have all three, and thus this book rates very high with me.

Queijo has taken the task of compiling the top ten medical breakthroughs in history, and has done so with an exceptional level of investigation and historical perspective. When one reflects on all the marvels we now take for granted in the 21st century, the developments in medicine could easily rank among the most prodigious. Queijo is an excellent guide, often pulling together segments of progress spread over generations to establish concrete developments in medicine. He clearly illustrates the significant impact each breakthrough has provided to humanity.

The mere fact that this book is so thorough and lucid will leave you with both a very complete understanding of the remarkable history of medicine as well as a significant appreciation for its impact and progress. You won't need to agree with his selections nor have a scientific background to fully enjoy Queijo's work, and thus I highly recommend this book.

Perhaps the book could be a little better organized. It reads like a textbook, with the ten chapters further divided into "milestones," ranging from five to ten per chapter. A straight narrative approach might have been more effective. There's also a significant amount of what seems to me to be needless repetition.

But, after having said all of that, the book still works for me. Based on my limited knowledge of the history of medicine, I have long believed that before about 1800, one was usually better off just letting a disease run its course rather than risk the hazards of seeing the typical physician. Doctors would often cause more harm than good with their "cures": bleeding, induced vomiting, and noxious laxatives. Doctors would themselves spread deadly infections with their dirty hands. There are plenty of fascinating anecdotes in Jon Queijo's book that chronicle this generally backwards state of medicine before the nineteenth century.

There are also highly readable descriptions of big medical "breakthroughs," such as Hippocrates and his separation of medicine from myth and superstition, Wilhelm Roentgen's work with X-rays, Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccination, and Gregor Mendel's pioneer studies of genetics.

I feel this book would be best for readers (like me) who have a limited knowledge of the subject. It would probably not do much for an expert in the field. However, Appendix B contains an extensive bibliography that could help the serious scholar.

As far as the concerns expressed by some reviewers about the inclusion of Chapter 10 on alternative medicine, I feel this chapter fits in well with the book's general theme: anything that helps people recover is "good," no matter what established interests may claim. And Queijo stresses that for centuries established interests bitterly mocked and condemned new medical discoveries that would eventually save countless lives. Many people have reported benefiting from alternative techniques. It seems to me that an open, pragmatic mindset should govern an analysis of alternative medicine. This is the basic thesis of Queijo's Chapter 10.

The author makes a credible list of the the most important medical Breakthroughs in history. The book is easy to read and the breakthroughs are presented in a rough outline format that traces the development of breakthroughs like sanitation, germ theory, anesthesia,vaccines, X-rays and the like. The only place where the author falls short is in the last chapter. He presents alternative medicines as a breakthrough. While some alternative medicines are helpful to some people, he casts a wide net across an array of therapies, medicines and practices in the category. While some of these are important, many are questionable. Taken together, they don't meet his implied definition of breakthrough. Rather, the author seems to be including them out of out of the sheer popularity of Alt-Med.

The book is a quick read but informative for the layman. While I had a general knowledge of some of the topics, the author has a good style and uses interesting anecdotes to make this a smooth flowing and readable book. As this is a book of personalities (the discoverers of the breakthroughs), the principal players are well fleshed out by the author. One of the interesting things to ruminate on is that every breakthrough had to fight the prejudices of current medical thought and were often delayed or ridiculed by the scientific / medical establishment who thought they possessed true knowledge of how science and biology worked. The debunking of established wisdom was often a long and contentious process (I couldn't help but think of Global Warmists and their certainty that computer models can accurately predict climate a century hence as I write this during my extended Christmas break of 2010 a thousand miles from home because a blizzard has closed East Coast airports!) One only needs to remember George Washington being bled to death by the medical experts of his time to appreciate the lesson.

Have you ever stopped to wonder with all the microorganisms that are creepy-crawling out there how the human race has ever survived? It is truly remarkable all of the medical technological advances that have taken place over the years to keep mankind from going the way of the dinosaurs and this book goes through ten of the most incredible "discoveries" that have kept us healthy in the midst of potential catastrophe. Whether people recognize it or not, the BREAKTHROUGH that happens when a major disease is conquered is a huge win for future generations who will never know what life was like living with that. Think about it this way--if scientists ever find a cure for diabetes, cancer, or AIDS, then kids growing up in the next generation won't have to worry about something that plagues modern-day society ever again. I don't know about you, but that sends chills up and down my spine.

But as author Jon Queijo points out in his book, that's already happened with some of the greatest discoveries in medicine that has literally saved millions and changed our view of the world. He details those in this book, including the compelling stories behind how modern medicine was founded, the importance of sanitation unveiled, realizing there are germs, the invention of anesthesia, x-rays, vaccines, antibiotics, DNA, psychosomatic drugs, and most recently, alternative medicine. This book is a real page-turner as you get the back story behind some of the most amazing medical stories in the history of the world. And don't you dare miss the lessons the author shares in the epilogue to encourage even more BREAKTHROUGH moments to happen in the future. If we don't learn from history, then we're bound to repeat it!