One afternoon, a brilliant medical investigator unveiled beforean eager crowd of physicians a stunning series of experimentsthat would revolutionize how they understood the human body.Realizing that he was making medical history, the investigatorrepeatedly reminded his audience that he was the first to conceiveof these earth-shaking ideas. Not content merely to declarehis originality, the scientist went to great lengths to disparagethose competitors who offered differing medical theories. Callinghis intellectual rivals "lazy" and "ignorant," the scientistexclaimed that his work was "as superfluous to them as a taletold to an ass."
Dr. Markel is director of the Center for the History of Medicine and a professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor.
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