The Youngest Science by Lewis Thomas

The Youngest Science Reviews

• 
  Jim

  I like Thomas. He has some opinions, even strong ones, but he's nice about it & obviously ready to change his mind if new data comes in. His reminiscences are informative, occasionally funny, & always interesting. His experience in medicine & this book start with his father, a family physician in Flushing, NY (Queens) in the 1920s. He becomes a doctor in the early 1930s & all they could usually do was comfort patients until sulfa drugs came along later in that decade. His descriptions are great, but terribly sad. They're also an incredible reminder of how far we have come so fast.
  
  This is not quite the same as
  The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher or
  The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher since he starts out with chapters that stick to a single topic - his early life as a physician - but it does become a series of essays as it progresses like his others. That's fine. It's all interesting even when he gets too technical for me. That only happens in parts of the essays & they're quickly done, so I never get bogged down.
  
  He covers a lot of ground including some of his time in the military in WWII & as the head of various facilities. There are also essays on other topics such as why women should rule the world for a century, how he came to publish his essays & books, & other topics. Plenty here for everyone.
  
  I was left with a lot of questions. They're all due to my ignorance in his field. He wrote this in 1983 & I wonder how some of his observations & abandoned experiments turned out. If you know, please tell me in the comments!
  - Why does penicillin kill guinea pigs half the year & not the other half? At least, I think that's the conclusion he came to.
  - How is the fight against rheumatoid arthritis coming? Did his research into it lead anywhere?
  - How likely is his idea that there is one, basic underlying cause for all cancers?
  
  Highly recommended! I also recommend his other 2 books. They all have a lot of food for thought. I can see by other reviews that even doctors still like reading this. Yeah, it's that good.
• 
  Katie Bananas

  I didn't have access to the book, so I listened to this. A 5 Star rating is not enough to express the value of this book. It took me personally a good while to read, because I took this small book as a learning experience. Dr. Thomas covers his family biography of their interest in medicine, as well as his achievements and experiences on rounds during his residency and immersed time with research. What an amazing amount of information I gathered and learned.
  
  Every time I got to listen to this audiobook, I was fascinated by it not wanting it to end. This is one of the books that I will read and re-read again and again, because with repetition and practice comes expert learning.
  
  The evolution of medicine that was presented was so profound to make me want to reach for his other books and essays, and other nonfiction books as well.
• 
  D. Ryan

  I re-read this after my first year of medical school. I first read it in high school but didn't understand just how unique and valuable this book really is.
• 
  Linus Williams

  A fascinating account of how medicine has changed since the early 20th century and what it has become. Dr. Thomas lived, worked, and researched through some of the most interesting medical times, and he writes clearly and vividly about them. I am a better doctor-to-be, researcher, and indeed person for having read this book. A must-read.
• 
  Scott Pearson

  Lewis Thomas spent his life revolving around various aspects of medicine – apprenticeship, patients, research, administration, being a patient, and writing. In this memoir, he shares tales and insights from all of these experiences in an easy-to-digest and relatable format.
  
  I especially enjoyed his notes from his time as Dean of Yale’s medical school. Perhaps it’s because I work for an associate dean of medicine now. I appreciate his admonishments not to intervene too much in faculty affairs. If a culture is healthy, trying to change small aspects can only foul the waters.
  
  This book often makes the list of recent physician-writers worth reading. It is well-written and even dives into scientific detail about cellular biology. Thomas even submits some thoughts on political theory: Women should not only run the earth, but in compensation for centuries of disenfranchisement, only women should be allowed to vote (not men)!
  
  Overall, this is a light and witty read with loads of wisdom.
  
  
• 
  Remo

  Un médico, por lo visto bastante renombrado, narra en esta obra su manera de ver la medicina, y cómo ha cambiado su práctica a lo largo de su carrera profesional (el estilo se parece al de
  Interacciones de Sheldon Glashow). Los capítulos son independientes y están ordenados más o menos cronológicamente. El estilo no es de los que me atraen. Es, valga la cacofonía, una prosa sosa. No me ha apasionado. Además no es nada actual, con lo que la mayoría de los "problemas abiertos" que plantea están bastante más resueltos: artritis reumatoide, micoplasmas... No es demasiado inspirador.
• 
  Kristina

  All three Thomas books are apologies for meaning to be found in creation. Sadly, the author falls short of tying that back to God. Nevertheless, he comes so close, and his explanation is beautiful.
• 
  Caitlin Sweeting

  An enjoyable journey through medicine in the 20th century framed by Dr Thomas's own impressive experiences. It gives interesting insight into events that have shaped today's healthcare.
• 
  Sue

  I have been reading Lewis Thomas since the '70s, but I had not read this one. His earlier books of essays and thoughts (The Lives of a Cell and The Medusa and the Snail), many published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are among the most prized books in my collection. The Youngest Science is very interesting as a history of medicine and medical training, but I also enjoy his personal reflections very much. It is amazing how much Medicine has progressed during my lifetime. So many of today's standard procedures were not even a dream during the time Thomas was working. It was the '70s before CTs and MRIs and PET scans were invented and used! Scientific medical procedures were blooming about that time, and it has continued to advance rapidly since.
  A good reason to read Thomas is that he is so READABLE. It makes learning fun even though packed with information about a variety of things. The Lives of a Cell and the Medusa and the Snail are better to start with, I believe, as they are not as focused on training and research and personal experience. (It was in one of those that I first learned that it is your own overactive immune system that causes most of the horrible, debilitating symptoms in many serious infections--now called the cytokine storm. This event is causing so much suffering in COVID now!)
  Thomas was ahead of his time in many ways, but he describes the knowledge and art of medicine in his years beautifully.
• 
  Zaki Emad

  Dr. Thomas is a master storyteller and an even better historian. This book really put into perspective the monumental leaps they have happened in medicine over the past century, and helped me have a better appreciation for the therapies and technologies at our disposal that we often take for granted. That's not to mention our advanced understanding of the pathophysiology of disease, a lot of which was a direct product of Dr. Thomas's hard work, and others at his time. I was pleased by his righteous and compassionate views on hierarchy in medicine and the role of allied healthcare workers beside doctors.
  
  Definitely recommended reading for people in healthcare.
• 
  Biggus Dickkus

  မင်းခိုက် စိုးစံ လိုမျိုး အရမ်းတိကျ တဲ့ သိပ္ပံပညာရပ်မှာတောင် uncertainty principle ဆိုတာ ရှိတယ်ဆိုပြီး လည်း ခပ်ပိန်းပိန်း မပြောချင်ဘူး။ ဖူကိုးလို ပြောမယ်ဆိုရင် epistemic shift, သောမတ်စ်ခွန်း လို ဆိုရင် paradigm shift(the structure of scientific revolutions ဖတ်ရန်လိုသေး) witchcraft လိုမျိုး မန်းမှုတ်ပြီး ရောဂါကုတဲ့ ကိုးကွယ် ယုံကြည်မှု အဆင့်ကနေ empirical observation scientific data တွေ trial တွေ ဆီ တက်လှမ်းလာတဲ့ ဆေးပညာရဲ့ သမိုင်းကြောင်းကတော့ နုနယ် လှသေးတယ် (ပင်နီဆလင် ပေါ်တာ နှစ်တစ်ရာ မပြည့်သေး)
• 
  Courtney Smith Atkins

  I liked reading about medical care in the early 1900’s and how palliative care has evolved. Fascinating. He made predictions in this book (wrote in the 80’s) and it was interesting to consider with my perspective today. It’s an interesting read and I was only lost a few times when he got into technical terms regarding topics I had very little interest in.
• 
  Marco

  Thomas was an exceptionally smart man, who had a gift of putting his thoughts in entertaining writing. Wide ranging ideas. Fun. Educative. Thought provoking.
• 
  J

  I highly recommend Lewis Thomas' "The Youngest Science" because he documents Medicine's progression in the 100 years up to 1993. I find it fascinating how he accounts for Medicine in its nascent emergence and evolution into a true science.
  
  I appreciate his postulating about disease processes arising from the experience he acquired throughout his life. Afforded the prospect of awareness in the time that has passed since he penned this book, I am amazed at what Dr. Thomas was able to hypothesize, and while many of his predictions may have met blind ends, having access to his insights helps me to ponder predictions of my own as I contemplate the future.
  
  Read it. It will help you to appreciate how a brilliant scientist thinks. And it will almost certainly help you to make contributions and reflections on knowledge in the world where you choose to make your mark.
• 
  Elizabeth Eslami

  This is, I believe, my fourth or fifth experience reading Lewis Thomas, and he never ceases to delight. Somehow he manages to be a crackerjack scientist and doctor, a clever, gently funny writer, and insanely avuncular simultaneously. Every patient - past, present, or future - should read his thoughtful essay here on Illness. And for those of you of a more literary bent who forswear books with scientific jargon, let me entice you with this tidbit: None other than Joyce Carol Oates first convinced him to collect his New England Journal of Medicine essays in book form.
• 
  Roberta

  This is why I love being in a book group - to get an assignment like this, a book I would never come across. It's a collection of essays that give you insight into the earlier years of modern medicine. The most timeless is simply called Illness, in which he makes the point that you can become a better doctor after experiencing illness yourself.
• 
  Mish

  A not overly technical book, this still held my interest and gave a nice overview of one man's experience with Medicine, from the founding of the M.D/Ph.D. program to advances in immunology, as well as some general musings about the future of medicine.
  Very broad strokes. But accessible for the layperson. 5/5 for sure.
• 
  Chris Comis

  Great book on the not-so-distant attempts of modern day (witch) doctors to understand the inner essences of all things somatic. Pretty interesting stuff at the end there on Lewis' attempts to understand the root causes of cancer.
• 
  Lafe

  A really great book about medicine in the last century. It is written in a conversational tone. It is great for anyone wanting to learn more about medicine and read a great book. It is now one of my favorite books.
• 
  Anastasia

  Interesting accounts of discovery and failure in academic medicine in New York City as it evolved from an art to a science. Particulary interesting to those who trained at the institutions mentioned: NYU Bellevue, Cornell, Rockefeller, etc.