What is the greatest medical discovery?

Come and join us at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival for a fascinating look at the key innovations in medicine over time. Explore with us how humans have always sought to understand the body, diagnose, treat and prevent disease, and why challenges remain despite so many Great Discoveries in Medicine.

The essays in this new edition explore questions such as how the plague affected the course of history, how diseased hearts and worn-out hips are replaced, and what effect the contraceptive pill had on the lives of women and on wider society. And it looks at turning points and breakthroughs in medicine and practice from ancient Egypt and China to modern technologies and COVID-19.

Helen Bynum is a historian of science and medicine with a particular interest in plants and their importance in culture and society. She is the author of Spitting Blood: The history of tuberculosis and with her husband William, she has written or edited books including The Dictionary of Medical Biography, Remarkable Plants that Shape Our World and Botanical Sketchbooks. William Bynum is Emeritus professor of the history of medicine at UCL and the author of A Little History of Science, History of Medicine: a very short introduction and Science and the Practice of Medicine.