A Harley Street psychiatrist concerned at the rigid and inhumane official treatment of long-term heroin addicts, is plunged into a vicious legal battle which becomes a cause celebre. She is found guilty by the General Medical Council of serious professional misconduct.

“[A] remarkable journey.”—The Telegraph The incredible life story of legendary cardiac surgeon and scientist Magdi Yacoub, an outsider who succeeded against the odds Veteran journalists Simon Pearson and Fiona Gorman follow the remarkable life of heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub from his formative years in Egypt, through spectacular success at Cairo University, to his long and distinguished career in Britain. Although at times he clashed with the medical establishment in London, Yacoub pioneered great advances in heart surgery. He was knighted in 1992, and in 2014, he was awarded the highest honor in the gift of the Queen, the Order of Merit. Written with unprecedented access and drawing on extensive interviews and research, the biography recounts how Yacoub transformed the treatment of children with congenital heart disease. He performed some of the first heart transplants in Britain and the first heart-lung transplants in Europe. At London’s Harefield Hospital, he created the greatest heart transplant center in the world. Among his patients are men and women who are still thriving more than thirty-five years after he gave them new hope. This story is also about science, the development of new medical techniques, and a deeper understanding of how the human body works. Today, at an age when most people have long since retired, Yacoub is still pushing the boundaries of scientific understanding and surgical know-how. He is also taking heart surgery to places that until now have had little access to cardiac treatment, developing centers of excellence across Africa, including in Egypt, where his hospital in Aswan has an international reputation, and a new center is rising in Cairo. Yacoub’s life is one of triumph and tragedy, success and failure, fierce criticism and high praise—it is also an enthralling journey through the worlds of scientific research and medical politics and ethics at the highest levels.

Edited and written by an international "who's who" of more than 100 authors, including anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, bench scientists, a surgeon, and representatives of industry, this text provides a comprehensive history of anesthesia, unique in its focus on the people and events that shaped the specialty around the world, particularly during the past 70 years when anesthesia emerged from empiricism and developed into a science-based practice.

In this excursion into medical and psychoanalytic history, Paul E. Stepansky charts the rise and fall of the "surgical metaphor"--Freud's view of psychoanalysis as analogous to a surgical procedure. Approaching Freud's understanding of surgery and surgeons historically and biographically, Stepansky draws the reader into the world of late nineteenth-century "heroic surgery," a world into which Sigmund Freud himself was drawn. --From publisher's description

Informative, comprehensive, and fascinating history of surgery Well-researched and compelling reading for all with an interest in medical history Includes full appendices and 800-entry bibliography From the discovery of anesthesia over 150 years ago in Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to heart transplants and beyond, advances in surgery have had the drama and excitement of a novel. Here is the full, fascinating story of these advances discussed in an eminently readable book. In lively fashion the author describes such outstanding developments as the discoveries of antisepsis and asepsis; techniques that permitted abdominal and brain surgery; the evolution of surgical specialization; and Rontgen's X-rays, critical in the advancement of orthopedics. Surgery is filled with absorbing accounts of surgical triumphs, including the unmasking of appendicitis by the Harvard pathologist Reginald Fitz; the brilliance of Harvey Cushing at Johns Hopkins in establishing neurosurgery; and the work of William Stewart Halsted, also of Johns Hopkins, on hernia surgery and breast cancer.This revised and enlarged edition contains much new material, particularly on abdominal surgery--the sphere of the "general" surgeon--and a full bibliography of some 800 entries.