A course in Medicine

Architect of the first pyramid and the earliest named physician in history.

Physician to gladiators and emperors whose anatomy ruled medicine for 1,400 years.

Treatise on Cold Damage remains a foundation of Chinese medicine.

Distinguished smallpox from measles and pioneered clinical case records.

Wrote the medical textbook that trained Europe's doctors until 1650.

Preserved and completed Ibn Sina's corpus.

Abbess, composer, and author of the first known European medical texts by a woman.

His Aristotle commentaries restarted European philosophy.

Guide for the Perplexed reconciled reason and revelation for Judaism.

Dissected humans himself and corrected Galen; founded modern anatomy.

Invented vaccination; smallpox is the only human disease ever eradicated.

Proved handwashing saves mothers' lives; ridiculed and died in an asylum.

Proved that invisible organisms cause disease — and that we can beat them.

Identified the mosquito as the vector of yellow fever.

The silver stain that made neurons visible.

Founded neuroscience by drawing the neuron doctrine.

Invented psychoanalysis and the modern language of the unconscious.

Doctor-playwright who invented modern drama's subtext.

First great synthesiser of Chinese and Western medicine; his case records still teach clinicians.

Ophthalmologist whose novels ignited the Philippine revolution; executed at 35.

The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.

Isolated a pancreatic hormone before the Toronto insulin team.

Dentist whose global survey of traditional diets tied refined food to physical degeneration.

Eradicated yellow fever from Rio and founded Brazilian public health.

Co-authored the founding text of anthroposophic medicine and opened its first clinic in Arlesheim.

Described a disease, its parasite and its vector single-handedly.

Opened Britain's first birth-control clinic; the charity still operates in 37 countries.

Penicillin; antibiotics have saved an estimated 200 million lives.

First Latin American science laureate; pituitary role in glucose metabolism.

Co-discovered insulin and sold the patent for one dollar.

Turned penicillin from curiosity into mass-manufactured medicine.

Acquired immune tolerance, the basis of transplantation.

Revived Kampo in Japan and secured its place inside the national health insurance system.

Discovered nerve growth factor in a bedroom lab under fascist persecution.

Surgeon-acupuncturist who built a biophysical model of meridian therapy.

Explained the nerve impulse in mathematical terms.

Polio vaccine, unpatented — 'could you patent the sun?'

Ran the first double-blind trials in psychiatry and founded orthomolecular medicine with high-dose niacin.

Personal physician to the Dalai Lama who preserved Tibetan medicine through 17 years of imprisonment.

Psychiatrist whose Wretched of the Earth remains the core text of decolonisation.

Monoclonal antibodies — now a $200bn class of medicines.

Extracted artemisinin from ancient texts; millions of malaria deaths averted.

Physician and writer who broke silence on FGM and patriarchy in the Arab world.

Documented the relaxation response at Harvard and made mind-body medicine measurable.

Framed clinical practice around the tack rule — take out what harms, put in what's missing.

Pioneer of reverse pharmacology, translating classical formulas into clinical trials.

Wrote The Web That Has No Weaver, then founded Harvard's programme in placebo studies.

Discovered telomerase, central to ageing and cancer research.

Co-founded Bastyr University, the first accredited natural-medicine university in the United States.

Drank the bacterium to prove ulcers are infectious, not stress.

Proved lifestyle change can reverse coronary artery disease; first such programme reimbursed by Medicare.

Demoted, defunded, and right: her mRNA work produced the COVID vaccines.

Surgeon who has treated tens of thousands of survivors of wartime sexual violence.

Co-discovered nucleoside-modified mRNA.

Reprogrammed adult cells into stem cells, remaking regenerative medicine.