This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

A lively, accessible, and fully illustrated guide to the history of medicine, from ancient practices to cutting edge innovations. Clifford Pickover continues his popular series that includes The Physics Book and The Math Book with this volume chronicling the advancement of medicine in 250 entertaining, illustrated landmark events. Touching on such diverse subspecialties as genetics, pharmacology, neurology, sexology, and immunology, Pickover intersperses “obvious” historical milestones—the Hippocratic Oath, general anesthesia, the Human Genome Project—with unexpected and intriguing topics like “truth serum,” the use of cocaine in eye surgery, and face transplants.

The history of medicine is as old as the history of human civilization. In The Medical Book, popular science writer Clifford A. Pickover explores 250 milestone discoveries in medicine that span more than 12,000 years. Whether writing on 'hard science' topics such as DNA structure, reverse transcriptase and AIDS, polymerase chain reaction, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or ideas from the medical fringe such as witch doctors, patent medicines, bloodletting, and near-death experiences, Pickover brings insight and acumen to the broad spectrum of medical studies and makes it understandable to all readers. This volume is abundantly illustrated in full colour with clinical and historical art.

“A thrilling, fast-paced excursion through the history of physical discovery . . . from silly putty to string theory” (Dr. Paul Halpern, author of Collider). Following his previous volumes, The Science Book and The Math Book, acclaimed science writer Clifford Pickover returns with a richly illustrated chronology of physics, containing 250 short, entertaining, and thought-provoking entries. In addition to exploring such engaging topics as dark energy, parallel universes, the Doppler effect, the God particle, and Maxwells demon, The Physics Book extends back billions of years to the hypothetical Big Bang and forward trillions of years to a time of “quantum resurrection.” Like the previous titles in this series, The Physics Book offers a lively and accessible account of major concepts without getting bogged down in complex details.