Dr. Ralph Snyderman provides a brief, biographic chapter on his childhood and years of study. He describes his life in Brooklyn, NY, and his ancestry from the Ukraine. His university years and course of study in medical school are described. Last, he provides an outline of his positions prior to Duke University.

A brief history of Western medicine starts with Galen and takes one from the humoral-imbalance theory to the late 19^th century germ theory of disease. A key turning point in medicine was the Flexner Report of 1910, which facilitated the transformation of medicine into a science-based enterprise...