The Medical Detectives

It all seems routine. You come home from a weekend in the mountains and complain of a headache the next day. Tuesday you have a slight fever and spend the day in bed. But that night, tossing in sweaty sheets, dehydrated, wracked with spasms, you gasp for a doctor and what he prescribes may depend on how alert he has been to the work increasingly done by medical detectives.

These research scientists, laboring alone or in teams, sift through the data supplied by doctors from the front lines of disease. Their solutions are often intuitive and they rely as much on judgment as on what the test tubes show.

"Mysteries, with doctors as the sleuths -- and sometimes culprits!...highly addictive reading." (Chicago Sun-Times)