At that point, it didnвЂ™t occur to me that I could become a doctor and a writer, like Crichton. I vividly remember the scene where he had used a form of epilepsy as a plot point. I believe Crichton wrote it when he was at Harvard Medical School, which made it all the more fascinating. This was the first Michael Crichton book I ever read, and I inhaled it while I was at New York University School of Medicine over twenty years ago. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton

After all, since truth can be stranger than fiction, we can all get our thriller chills from the pages of history, too. So with this in mind, IвЂ™ve included some real life medical stories on my list of top Medical Mysteries that fascinated me to no end. With my adult historical mysteries, there is a good amount of historical research involved in medical, forensic, and toxicological areas. Grave robbing was a serious business, and the idea of killing the living for cadaver sales, a la Burke and Hare, were a real thing. In my most recent novel, The Impossible Girl, the murder mysteries were grounded in the annals of medical education-the procurement of cadavers for anatomical study. In my author life, medical mysteries have far less consequences (I have no qualms about killing in books, but my day job is 1000% the opposite, obviously-I am a huge proponent of preventative medicine). Why is this patient dizzy? Where is the source of this new and perplexing pain? Why is the serum sodium so darn low? As a physician, I am used to dealing with medical mysteries every day.

Best medical books for doctors