Julia Fenster's Ether Day about the first use of surgical anesthesia. It's an amazing story, though tragic, as the discovery and fight for ownership basically ruined the lives of all involved. Also sad as the chemistry for sulfuric ether and nitrous oxide was there already from about 1800, but people just had accepted that surgery was a painful fact of life, and so many people had to go through horrific suffering when something that could've eliminated it was dismissed as a frivolity. Boston had the right convergence of factors that allowed for the first public use of ether, often attributed as America's first great medical discovery. And in a very American fashion, it took a lightly educated con-artist to break the paradigms held by the European oriented medical community and change medicine forever.

It feels like something out of hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, but I can't say for certain