Sickness and health, birth and death, disease and cure: medicine and our understanding of the workings of our bodies and minds are an inextricable part of how we know who we are.

In this inspiring compendium, distinguished experts from around the world explain medicine’s turning points and conceptual changes, and answer a series of key questions: How did the Plague influence the course of human history? What should complementary medicine’s role be? How did an audacious self-experiment lead to a cure for stomach ulcers and a Nobel Prize?

The book is magnificently illustrated with a unique array of pictures, from beautiful Renaissance anatomical drawings to the very latest computer-generated images of viruses and photographs that reveal the hidden world within our bodies.

William Bynum is Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at University College London and has been associated with the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine for more than thirty-five years. Helen Bynum lectured in medical history at the University of Liverpool and is now a freelance editor, writer, and lecturer. She is coeditor with William Bynum of the award-winning Dictionary of Medical Biography.