From the desk of Ghazi Rayan, MD comes this ambitious, broad and pivotal work of both immersive history and culture through time, detailing the growth of medical progress and its connection to the movement of people and ideas across borders. Immigrant Physicians describes the full history of American medicine—including its roots in pre-American civilizations—through the biographies of some of the most influential first-generation immigrant doctors and the great leaps they made at the turn of the century. It ties the global historical narrative more closely to the story of American history. Delivering a powerful, nonpolitical message, the book makes a compelling case for the importance of legal immigration to the future of progress.

The history of American medicine is inexorably connected with that of immigration. With a deft hand for storytelling and a finger on the pulse of the American narrative, Ghazi delivers this powerful volume detailing the storied contributions that immigrant clinicians and surgeons have made to their respective fields. Through immigrants’ inspiring struggles and triumphs, readers will gain a better understanding of medicine as a practice, and a deeper appreciation for diversity.

Sweeping across antiquity and the Middle Ages, through the Colonial Era and the Revolution, and culminating in the 20^th century, Dr. Rayan’s research stretches broad and deep, examining the many layers of the American medicine and its relationship to history and culture. With a keen eye for narrative, Dr. Rayan crafts this imperative book for the reader to understand the significance of immigration and free trade of ideas to the future of American progress and prosperity. Today in American society, we owe a vast amount of our medical heritage to the innovations and perspectives that have traversed national borders.

Featuring the biographies of industry-leading foreign-born physicians, Immigrant Physicians tracks the major development of the field from antiquity through the 20^th Century, seamlessly combining them with lessons on culture and the great leaps of medical progress taken at the turn of the century.

Immigrant physicians made medical breakthroughs in anatomical science and promoted and advanced medical education during the nation’s formative years. They brought and disseminated desperately needed medical knowledge and care during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and army surgeons fearlessly endangered their lives by exposing themselves to enemy fire to save wounded soldiers in the battlefield. Some of these physicians were mortally injured and lost their lives in the service of their adopted country.

The book simplifies to the reader the causes and cures of many maladies and disease epidemics and the diagnostic, therapeutic and technical innovations immigrant physicians made to help avert disease outbreaks. It highlights those physicians’ efforts of designing the many lifesaving medical devices that advanced modern medical care. It also details how several medical and surgical specialties were founded or introduced and advanced in America by immigrant physicians.

In this book the readers will learn about the many complex layers of the American healthcare system and recognize its adverse current state, how it came to be, the challenges it presently faces, its possible solutions and how immigrant healthcare providers favorably influenced its course.

Immigrant women played no less significant role than their male counterparts in enriching medicine by delivering newborns and caring for the dying in hospices. Some actively participated in the suffragette movement and were staunch advocates of women rights for voting and medical education of their gender.

The profiles of these extraordinary 140 immigrant physicians men and women, posthumously conveys a voyage of discovery to tell their own tale, somehow express something timeless and transcendental about the human condition and our instinct altruism by helping the unknown other. Exploring the lives, the stories, and the times of those physicians helps us understand our own narrative; it helps us appreciate the true values of the promise of medical privilege that we enjoy today and so often take for granted; it helps us embrace diversity and inclusivity and know what it means to be an American.