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GREAT FEUDS IN MEDICINE
By: Hal Hellman
Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever
Wiley
February 2002
On Sale: February 10, 2002
256 pages
ISBN: 0471208337
EAN: 9780471208334
Paperback
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Non-Fiction
The history of medicine is fraught with controversy. From Sigmund Freud to Louis Pasteur, countless researchers, physicians, and scientists have found themselvesβand their workβat the center of ruthless disputes that have destroyed careers and lives. In this captivating follow-up to his acclaimed Great Feuds in Science, Hal Hellman tells the entertaining stories of the most heated and important of these disputes. Highlighting both famous and lesser-known clashes, Hellman offers a unique look at medical history. We learn about Ignaz Semmelweis, a Viennese doctor who in the mid-1800s argued that obstetricians should wash their hands before delivering babies and, after being dismissed from his job and ostracized by his community, eventually landed in a mental hospital.We encounter Claude Bernard, a 19th-century physiologist who worked under constant accusations by antivivisectionists that his experiments on animals were a crime against nature and society. He was eventually disowned by his parents. Hellman also reviews the beneficial effects of scientific controversy. We learn how Louis Pasteur, thriving in the midst of the many battles he faced, came up with even more significant advances as a result of his trouble. We see Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, debaters of "animal electricity," slugging it outβand egging each other onβacrosss 18th-century Europe. We witness the discovery of DNA and the war over the discovery of the AIDS virus, HIV. By shedding light on these feuds, Hellman reveals how our lives might have been different had these medical discoveriesβand the disputes that followedβnever occurred. From William Harveyβs 17th-century battle with the medical establishment over his discovery that blood circulates and Jonas Salkβs legendary fight with Albert Sabin over polio vaccinations (a fight Salk ultimately lost) to the nasty recent dispute between American Robert Gallo and French researcher Luc Montagnier over who first discovered HIV, this eye-opening book conveys how the high-stakes battle between ideas and ambition, evidence and ego, characterizes medical advancement. Ultimately, Great Feuds in Medicine reveals that quarrels are not only typical of, but often necessary to, the progress of medicine.
 Media BuzzCBS Sunday Morning - January 21, 2007
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