His name will be forever linked to mastectomy. At the peak of his surgical career, in the 1890s, he learned from the "refined European techniques" of London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna in the medical version of the Grand Tour. One of the book's great strengths is the bringing to life of scientists: from the Scottish surgeon, Joseph Lister, who in 1865, inspired by Pasteur, discovered carbolic acid's vital role in surgery, to the morphine-addicted William Stewart Halsted. This is the story of cancer, that most "desperate, inventive, fierce, territorial, canny, and defensive" of illnesses. It is also a story of the early days of fund-raising, of love-ins and rifts with politicians of the effects of war, of the specific "War on Cancer" declared in 1969 and its continuing war rhetoric a tale of hopes, dreams and pincer-sharp disappointment. As does a Japanese painter of birds and fish whose illustrations helped bring Greek cytologist George Papanicolaou's discoveries – as in the Pap smear - out of obscurity. It is a story of inspiration found in bathtubs, blizzards and on night-time walks one in which the studios of Titian have their place: artists assisted student Andreas Vesalius in creating his atlas of anatomy that would tumble Claudius Galen's theory of humours, its "black bile" long considered the origin of cancer). This is a story of pioneers and mavericks of serendipity, risk-taking and wild leaps of faith of meetings of minds that changed medical history and obsessive experiments conducted in solitude.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |