Compassion fatigue is as damaging to a doctor’s health as to a patient’s
Medical training is a process of toughening up: take iron that’s vulnerable to rust, add carbon and make steel. That’s…
Popular medical non-fiction will soon have covered every human body part
Nobody warns you when you start medical school that your career decisions have only just begun. Up to a decade…
Can anyone get away with murder anymore?
When the 24-year-old Angela Gallop started working at the Home Office forensic science service, her boss lost no time in…
Discover your inner wolf and lead a better life
When it comes to showing emotion, are animals like humans or humans like animals? The difference is subtle but significant, says Kate Womersley
It’s entirely possible to die of a broken heart
The numbers invite awe: three billion beats in a lifetime; 100,000 miles of vessels. But on the hospital floor, wonder…
The burden of freedom: Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan, reviewed
It’s 1830, and among the sugar cane of Faith Plantation in Barbados, suicide seems like the only way out. Decapitations…
Unlucky in love: Caroline’s Bikini, by Kirsty Gunn, reviewed
‘The most interesting novels are a bit strange,’ Kirsty Gunn once told readers of the London Review of Books. ‘They…
Why I now find listening to Beethoven nauseating
Stephen Bernard has led an institutionalised life. Behind the doors of the church presbytery, at public school, on hospital wards…
How Joseph Lister transformed surgery from butchery to a healing art
Every operation starts the same way. Chlorhexidine scrubbed under nails, lathered over wet hands, palm-to-palm, fingers interlaced, thumbs, wrists, forearms.…
Siri Hustvedt’s thoughts on art, science and the human condition
This past autumn has felt more uncomfortable than usual to be a woman looking at men looking at women. From…
Tommy Wieringa’s Job-like hero has an age-old problem
With a title like A Beautiful Young Wife, this is of course about the decline of an older husband. Professor…
The enduring mystery of the human body
It’s not unreasonable to expect that the anatomy syllabus for a medical degree should include breasts. Last year I performed…
A deadly role reversal
Who would you trust to take a blade to your brain? Medical schools and hospitals, arbiters of this outrageous intimacy,…
Oliver Sacks bids farewell in style
‘I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not…
The kindness of strangers is a pleasing mystery
When I applied to medical school, an experienced doctor offered me some advice: ‘Don’t give them reason to think you’re…