OUP £16.99 pp320
“For 2,400 years,” Wootton claims in this alternative history of medicine, “patients have believed that doctors were doing them good; for 2,300 years they were wrong.” By openly acknowledging that most medicine, from the days of Hippocrates and the Ancient Greeks to the end of the 19th century, didn’t actually work, Wootton is able to provide fresh perspectives on medical history and ask new questions. Why did doctors go on cheerfully applying leeches and letting blood when there was no evidence that either practice did the patient any good? Why were potentially life-saving discoveries sidelined and ignored? When did real progress in saving lives and alleviating pain begin? Wootton’s book tells a sad but fascinating story of centuries of missed opportunities, unnecessary suffering and misplaced faith in outlandish remedies.
BRAIN MATTERS: Adventures of a Brain Surgeon
by Katrina S Firlik
Weidenfeld £16.99 pp303
“Forget ER,” advises the blurb on Firlik’s book about her life as a neurosurgeon, “this is the real thing.” Unfortunately, the real thing, in this instance, turns out to be rather dull. Depending on the teller, listening to stories of other people’s work can be either fascinating or mind-achingly boring. Brain surgeons, dealing every day with both the life-and-death decisions of the emergency room and the mysteries of consciousness, memory and the mind, ought to be able to hold our attention. Others probably can, but Firlik, seemingly unable to distinguish between what’s interesting (her patients and their case histories, the implications of recent advances in brain research) and what isn’t (the less than hilarious in-jokes that neurosurgeons apparently exchange around the operating table, for example), provides as much ennui as enlightenment.
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THE MEDICAL DETECTIVE
by Sandra Hempel
Granta £18.99 pp320
In the 19th century, cholera was one of Britain’s deadliest killers. John Snow, a London physician, was the first person to understand how it spread. During an outbreak in Soho in 1854, he analysed the mortality statistics and mapped them against the sources of water supply. He was able to prove that a single pump in a particular street was the site of infection. Hempel’s absorbing book describes how Snow painstakingly conducted his investigation and how he had to struggle against the entrenched opinions of other “experts” who believed the disease was carried through the streets of London’s slums in the foul-smelling air. Her account of Snow’s single-minded pursuit of the truth turns a deserved spotlight on one of the largely forgotten heroes of Victorian England.