Book excerpt: In' The Story of Medicine', esteemed medical historian Mary Dobson charts the ways in which we have fought with disease and injury over several millennia - from the 'humours' of Hippocrates to Edward Jenner and the eradication of smallpox, and from Florence Nightingale's nursing reforms to Crick and Watson's DNA chain. Richly illustrated with paintings, illustrations and photographs, this volume is filled with the trauma as well as the triumph of medical science, including the pain of the surgeon's knife in the centuries before anaesthetics, the body-snatchers of the nineteenth century and the realities of battlefield surgery. Moving and revealing, here is a fascinating study of the glorious - and sometimes dangerous - pursuit of medical science.