Skip to Main Content

About The Book

The Laws of Medicine follows Pulitzer-Prize-winning author, Dr Mukherjee as he investigates some of the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career - the cases that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine. As a young medical student, Mukherjee discovered The Youngest Science, a book that changed the way he understood the medical profession and forced him to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question:

Is medicine a 'science'?

Science must have laws - statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. Dr Mukherjee has spent his career pondering whether the 'youngest science' has laws like the other sciences, culminating in this treatise The Laws of Medicine.

Law 1: Rumours are more important than tests.

Law 2: The piece of data that does not fit your model is the most crucial piece of data that you own.

Law 3: For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.

Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this book is a glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments rarely seen by those outside the profession.

About The Author

Photograph © Deborah Feingold

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Song of the Cell,The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction; and The Laws of Medicine. He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. In 2023, he was elected as a new member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Visit his website at: SiddharthaMukherjee.com.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (October 8, 2015)
  • Length: 96 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781471141850

Browse Related Books

Awards and Honors

  • Paradies Lagardere Non-Fiction Airlines Pick

Resources and Downloads

High Resolution Images