If I Die In The Service Of Science

About the Book

If I Die in the Service of Science (First published as Guinea Pig Doctors) details the lives, experiments and discoveries of eight medical doctors who, in the course of their scientific investigations, used their own bodies to verify their revolutionary medical theories. Beginning with John Hunter's work on "the pox" in 18th century England, the book recounts the fascinating, colorful lives of these "guinea pig doctors":

• the Hartford dentist who "discovered" anesthesia by experimenting on himself with laughing gas
• the German scientists who toasted his rival with a solution laced with deadly cholera bacteria
• the famous case of Jesse Lazear, who let himself be bitten by a mosquito carrying yellow fever-and died-to prove to his colleagues that the disease was not spread by bacterial infection.

  The authors re-create these dramas in absorbing detail, focusing on the misconceptions and superstitions of society and the medical establishment against which each doctor struggled bravely-and won. The result is a rare blend of historical entertainment and incisive examination of the motivations-psychological, financial, social, professional-that drove these doctors to gamble their own lives on their theories. It is a marvelous and instructive study in human dedication.

About the Author

Jon Franklin is now Phillip Merrill Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, both firsts in their field. He is the co-author, with Alan Doelp of Schock Trauma and Not Quite a Miracle: Brain Surgeons and Their Patients on the Frontier of Medicine

Dr. John Sutherland is a retired pathologist from the University of Maryland Cancer Center. He has served as a medical missionary in Swaziland and the Eastern Transvaal of South Africa. He has also been a guinea pig doctor.