JAMES LE FANU

The history of medicine in the fifty years since the end of the Second World War ranks as one of the most impressive epochs of human achievement. So dramatically successful has been the assault on disease that it is now almost impossible to imagine what life must have been like back in 1945, when death in childhood from polio, diphtheria and whooping cough were commonplace, when there were no drugs for tuberculosis, or schizophrenia, or rheumatoid arthritis, or indeed for virtually every disease the doctor encountered.... This post-war medical achievement is well recognized, but much less appreciated is the means by which it was brought about.