In this scholarly and insightful biography, Alexander G. Bearn, a physician and a scientist in the Garrodian tradition, has drawn a portrait of one of the great minds of twentieth century medicine. It is story of intellectual achievement. But the book also gives a fascinating account of the life of a talented professional family and a perspective on the practice of medicine and on medical education at the turn of the century. Archibald Garrod is chiefly remembered as the originator of the concept of inborn metabolic error, an idea which grew from his studies of families with diseases whose biochemical basis he was able to identify. He was widely recognized for this achievement in his own lifetime and held a respected position in the medical establishment, a position accorded to him on the basis of his scientific achievement rather than for any great clinical skill. But to concentrate on the concept of inborn errors is to overlook what has in time turned out to be Garrod's greatest achievement, for it was he who first saw that genetics, biochemistry, and medicine are fundamentally linked. He propounded, to all who would listen, his thesis that disease can only be properly studied in the light of an individual's genetic susceptibility, and that that in turn rests on biochemical individuality. Only by thinking of human diseases as the consequences of genetic and environmental interaction are the advances of today's and tomorrow's medicine possible.

Outstanding researchers have made The Rockefeller Institute, later renamed the Rockefeller University, the home of great events in science. This small institution generated lines of research that have remained productive and important for a century.

Oswald Theodore Avery is little known outside of the scientific community. Yet, this extraordinary man, here brought vividly to life by a perceptive friend and sophisticated scientific colleague, was a monumental force in the development of medical research in the United States. Even among scientists, Avery is known chiefly as the senior author of a paper published in 1944 that identified DNA as the purveyor of genetic information. Two things make this highly personalized biography a landmark volume. First, its technical chapters clarify the philosophical concepts that lie behind today's understanding of the immunology of bacterial infection. Second, not a single existing textbook has ever described the laborious methods by which the men in Avery's laboratory discovered the genetic import of DNA.

Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies, and Politics is a testimony to the growing interest of scholars in the development of the biomedical sciences in the twentieth century and to the number of historians, social scientists and health policy analysts now working on the subject. The book is comprised of essays by noted historians and social scientists that offer insights on a range of subjects that should be a significant stimulus for further historical investigation. It details the NIH’s practices, policies and politics on a variety of fronts, including the development of the intramural program, the National Institute of Mental Health and mental health policy, the politics and funding of heart transplantation and the initial focus of the National Cancer Institute. Comparisons can be made with the development of other American and British institutions involved in medical research, such as the Rockefeller Institute and the Medical Research Council. Discussions of the larger scientific and social context of United States’ federal support for research, the role of lay institutions in federal funding of virus research, the consequences of technology transfer and patenting, the effects of vaccine and drug development and the environment of research discoveries all offer new insights and suggest questions for further exploration.

A comprehensive guide to carbon inside Earth - its quantities, movements, forms, origins, changes over time and impact on planetary processes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.