PHOTOGRAPH: TED KINSMAN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT? Cancellous bone of the human shin
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BRAINY BANDAGE A new “smart” bandage with an in-built processor could help treat non-healing chronic wounds from the likes of burns and diabetes. It can check for infection and inflammation by tracking pH and temperature then administer the correct dose of antibiotics when needed throughout the day.
EQUAL OPS FLU A tongue-in-cheek BMJ study into “man flu” sought to discover whether “men are wimps or just immunologically inferior”. It found that testosterone may act as an immunosuppressant while oestrogen works in the opposite direction meaning respiratory tract infections may actually present more severely in men.
BABY BOOM More than 8 million babies have been born from IVF since the UK birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the world’s first. International monitoring committee ICMART estimates that more than half a million IVF babies are born each year, with Spain and Russia the most active countries. European IVF pregnancy rates are around 36 per cent.
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Pick: Amazon Prime Video – The Resident WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT?
Stumped? The answer is at the bottom of the page
Directed by Rob Corn et al. Starring Matt Czuchry, Emily VanCamp, Bruce Greenwood.
IT’S hard for new medical dramas to offer up anything viewers haven’t seen a million times before, but The Resident seems to be trying to make cynicism its unique selling point. It lifts the lid on the dark side of modern American healthcare, where staff are given lessons on upselling expensive tests and bosses try to bribe other hospitals to take uninsured patients in need of pricey treatment. The doctors are portrayed as deeply flawed, borderline egomaniacs with chief
surgeon Randolph Bell (Greenwood) so determined to preserve his reputation he would rather risk patient death than reveal his hand tremor. At the heart of it all is Conrad Hawkins (Czuchry), a brilliant, brash third-year rock-star resident who refuses to play by the rules. With the help of nurse and old flame Nic (VanCamp) he will do anything to help his patients. Plots can be predictable and it is tricky to make characters at once flawed and likeable for audiences, but it is refreshing to see the economic reality of US healthcare laid bare. Season two starts on Universal TV later this year.
Book Review: The Butchering Art
By Lindsey Fitzharris, Allen Lane, £11.89, hardcover, 2017
Review by Dr Greg Dollman
IN one of his regular letters to his father, Joseph Lister wrote: “Thou canst hardly conceive what a high degree of enjoyment I am from day to day experiencing in this bloody and butchering department of the healing artist”. Lindsey Fitzharris’ The Butchering Art allows a glimpse into the personal and professional life of one of the most influential figures in modern medicine. And her description of “the bloody” and “the butchering” provided me with possibly the same high degree of enjoyment that Lister derived from his scientific art. Fitzharris chronicles Lister’s journey from an ambivalent medical
student (a Quaker, he had considered a life in the ministry) to his appointment as Queen Victoria’s personal surgeon (Lister once quipped: “I’m the only man who has ever stuck a knife into the Queen”) and the
multiple honours that were bestowed on him in later years, including a knighthood and presidency of the Royal Society. In between, she describes Lister’s unwavering pursuit of antisepsis, from London to Edinburgh (and around the world) and back again. The subtitle of this history is Lister’s Quest to transform the Grisly
World of Victorian Medicine. And grisly it certainly was. The book describes the squalor of the hospitals (surgery may have been seen as lifesaving but hospitals were considered places of death, usually for the poor), brutal and rapid surgical procedures without anaesthesia (Fitzharris relays a possibly apocryphal tale of a surgeon who sliced off his assistant’s fingers during an leg amputation), and the putrid, sawdust covered places of surgery that really were ‘theatres’ (open to the public where matters of life and death were considered entertainment). Apart from the story of medicine, The Butchering Art also provides a
fascinating history of life in Victorian Britain, with vignettes about people (including Harvey Leach, “the shortest man in the world” who joined PT Barnum’s Circus), places (such as Crystal Palace and the Old Bailey) and processes (decorum and education). While Fitzharris’ book is a delight to read, I was disappointed by the
seeming overly optimistic portrayal of Lister. The book glosses over the depression and neurosis that appears to have affected this great man. The history only scratches the surface of this fascinating era of medicine, and it left me longing for more.
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