From bloodletting and amputations without anesthesia to gene therapies and keyhole surgery - medicine has developed enormously. But there are amazing continuities and lines of tradition that go back centuries. What makes us sick? What influence does the soul have on our body? Can health be actively achieved through lifestyle or diet? Werner Bartens leads us through the history of mankind and medicine in a highly knowledgeable way. True to life and sometimes bloody, he tells of heroes of medicine, forgotten dramas and astonishing discoveries, without which the world would look different today. Bartens shows what we have taken over from the doctrine of the four humours, how Snow White's glass coffin and the boom in autopsies are connected, and why the first cardiac catheter, which Werner Forßmann implanted himself in 1929, was ignored by the great surgeon Sauerbruch. For those who want to understand today's medicine, Bartens opens up a panorama that explains the ideas and worldviews behind medical practice. An educational and entertaining look at the science of man with all his fears and needs, wishes and hopes.