Air date: August 22, 2010

Host: David Crabb, MD

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Interview: Stanley Joel Reiser, MD, physician, historian and medical ethicist, George Washington University

Just about every week on this program, we have guests talking about an MRI or CT scan, or some other form of high tech equipment, as if it were as common as a band-aid.

Our next guest, a physician and medical historian, reminds us that it wasn't always this way! Stanley Joel Reiser, MD, wrote the book Technological Medicine, the Changing World of Doctors and Patients.

He tells Sound Medicine’s David Crabb that before lasers and gamma rays, one of the first big advances came in 1816, with the invention of the stethoscope.

Dr. Stanley Joel Reiser is a physician, historian and medical ethicist at George Washington University.

Additional Resources:

• Take a peek at the book, Technological Medicine, on Amazon.com.
• The NYT review Dr. Reiser's book of essays, Technological Medicine.