Leyla Sanai

Cutting up rough

Houdini, Einstein and Bob Marley are also closely examined in Arnold van de Laar’s gruesome survey of remarkable operations

issue 03 March 2018

Powerful memoirs by such eloquent doctors as Oliver Sacks, Atul Gawande, Henry Marsh, Gabriel Weston and Paul Kalanithi have whipped the bed curtains open on a previously secretive profession. Steeped as medicine is in uncomfortable facts about debilitating illness, pain and the stress of treating intractable conditions, it was a subject ripe for exposure.

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