The Masters of Medicine: Our Greatest Triumphs in the Race to Cure Humanity’s Deadliest Diseases by Andrew Lam, M.D., is an outstanding addition to the medical history genre. As both an historian and a clinician, Dr. Lam is especially well-qualified to write with authority in this category. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), where he majored in history. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and completed residency in ophthalmology at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, where he served as chief resident before completing a 2-yr vitreoretinal surgery fellowship.
Dr. Lam, the author of three previous books, currently practices retina surgery in western Massachusetts.
The book is brilliantly organized around the half-dozen diseases or conditions responsible for killing the majority of mankind: heart disease, diabetes mellitus, infection (bacterial and viral), cancer, trauma, and childbirth. Within...
