Physicians in the 21st century can diagnose almost any ailment. Hi-tech machines can identify what is happening inside a person's body and surgeons can operate through nothing more than a tiny incision. Drugs can cure, or at least control, a wide range of illnesses. Yet it hasn't always been this way. Many people once died because operations were carried out with dirty knives, and some remedies were as bad as the diseases they were supposed to put an end to. This book looks at the advances that have taken place in medicine since earliest times.