“A Biographical History of Endocrinology” shows the progress of endocrinology from Hippocrates to the present day. It brings into focus important leaders and their contributions in the field.
The book is not intended to be a tool for diagnosis and treatment. In 108 chapters, the author points out the experiments and trials of the scientists that remain relevant today. Each chapter is only a few pages long and illustrates the role of the subject in the progress of our medical speciality. We learn that first description of diabetes appears in about 100 C.E. about Frederick Grant Banting and “Discovery of Insulin” and also Bartolomeo Eustachi and the adrenal gland, Richard Lower and the pituitary gland, Thomas Addison and adrenal insufficiency, Henry S. Plummer and “Toxic Nodular Goiter”, Hakaru Hashimoto and his disease, about Henry H. Turner and “Gonadal Dysgenesis” and Ernest Basil Verney and “Vasopressin is a Hormone”. These are just some of the scientists whose biography and the watershed moments in the history of their profession are found in “A Biographical History of Endocrinology”.
This book is a comprehensive but concise biographical history of endocrinology which answers the question “how did we get here?” and these stories could inspire generations of endocrinologists and scientists to continue solving mysteries of the disease, applying the remarkable advances in basic and translational endocrine research to the diagnosis and treatment of patients on a daily basis.
The author of this book, Dr. Loriaux is currently Professor of medicine and Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at OHSU. He came to OHSU, in 1990, from the National Institute of Health after a twenty year tenure. There he began as a clinical associate in the National Cancer Institute and ended as a senior investigator and Chief of the Developmental Endocrinology Branch and clinical director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. When he left the NIH, he had 350 peer reviewed publications and his group was credited with the discovery of five new endocrine diseases and new treatments for a number of endocrine disorders. Dr. Loriaux was appointed to chair of the Department of Medicine in 1994 till 2013 which is among the longest-serving chairs of Departments of Medicine in the nation. In 1995, he was president of the Endocrine Society.