blood and guts, surgeons and scientists: “the butchering art”

The Butchering Art is medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris's first book. And  what a book! Descriptions that bring the horrors of pre-anaesthesia, pre-antisepsis surgery shudderingly into view? Very definitely. Science and history? Oh yes, lots of it, and beautifully told. And through it all, the humanity and vision of Joseph Lister and others like him, working to […]

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helicobacter pylori and the complexity of the human microbiome

In their first-year microbiology lectures. our students hear about Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium associated with the development of gastric ulcers (a discovery that eventually saw Barry Marshall and Robin Warren receive the 2005 Nobel Prize for Physology or Medicine). The trouble is, I suspect that this is all that they hear about a story that […]

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essays on our fascination with those who are different

Book Review: The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels  by Jan Bondeson Cornell University Press, USA (2004) Paperback: i-xxii, 297 pages ISBN: 0-8014-8958-X RRP: US419.95 It's all Grant's doing, really. If he hadn't picked up on an off-hand comment of mine (relating to vipers in bosoms) & turned that into a catchy blog post, I quite probably […]

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the drunken botanist

That’s the title of one of the books I’m reading at the moment: The Drunken Botanist, by Amy Stewart. (I do not know any drunken botanists!) Contrary to any expectations engendered by the title, the book is a thoroughly engaging wander through botany, history, & a little bar-tending (although, now that I look at the […]

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