Main description:

This is the first fully illustrated history of Scottish medicine since 1932. Written by the leading Scottish medical historians of our time, it tells the dramatic story of how medicine in Scotland developed from its origins in prehistory. The early efforts of holy men and folk healers were superseded by the great achievements of figures such as the Monros, Robert Liston and James Syme. Men and women like Joseph Lister, David Livingstone, Sophie Jex-Blake and James Young Simpson transformed health care, not just in Scotland, but worldwide. The book contains over 250 colourful images from all stages of history, many previously unpublished, including Bronze Age skulls, beautifully painted medicinal plants, surgical instruments from the Roman period, depictions of pilgrims at healing wells, illuminated manuscripts of medical texts, Elizabethan portraits, ribald cartoons from the eighteenth century, photographs of patients from nineteenth-century hospital records, and many more.