Publisher's Synopsis
This is the story of some of the doctors and medical students who, in order to further medical research, experimented on themselves with new practices and therapies for the benefit of humanity - people such as Werner Forssmann who pushed a catheter tube via a vein into his own heart and so revolutionized techniques for combating heart disease. Other examples are Frederick Prescott and Scott Smith, two researchers who completely paralyzed themselves with curare in order to demonstrate that the poison could be used as a drug that would transform the practice of surgery, and Sigmund Freud's self-experimentation with cocaine.;Altman is the senior medical correspondent of the "New York Times".
