This one missed the mark for me unfortunately. It markets itself as a book looking at how exploration transformed medicine and even has a polar explorer on the cover. I had envisaged exciting accounts of expeditions to dangerous corners of the earth in which people had to draw upon medicine to help them out. Think jungle medicine to treat gangrene or the account of a polar doctor having to perform his own appendectomy. In reality it mentions people like Scott only in passing as a way to justify the title and then goes off in completely different directions. It lacks a focus, darting between different areas of medicine with basic text book-like physiology lessons alongside scattered and padded out anecdotes. The space bit towards the end is the only bit that really fits the bill but, for me, is only mildly interesting.
There are better books out there on exploration and medicine. This falls through the cracks of both.