This is Going to Hurt: The Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor is important reading for any Brit who’s about to vote without bearing the future of the NHS in mind. I’ve worked in that arena for the last 15 years and the last 10 years of that has been under the banner of ‘austerity’. In that time we’ve seen services go from underfunded to seriously critical, with staff breaking more and more regularly thanks to the increased stresses and strains that go hand in […]
How to sit when you poo and other important questions.
Do you ever lie awake at night and wonder what’s going on inside your stomach? Do you examine your poo before you flush? Do you know what tonsil stones are? Well, if you’re curious about any of the above, you should read Gut by Giulia Enders, because not only does she have answers, she also has a cheeky way of explaining how some parts of our bodies work that most of us just choose to ignore, because…. eeewwwwww. I made a conscious decision to stop reading *diet* […]
Do Not Lick This Book!!!
Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost are respected microbiologists who have created the YouTube series Dumb Ways to Die. They have collaborated with each other this time for a book called Do not lick this book* (It’s Full of Germs). They follow the different types of germs that live on and in our bodies. And while there are cartoon characters, photographs that show you what they really look like. These are done by Linnea Rundgren. Perhaps the author biographies are the best example of the tone […]
“Health and dignity are indissociable in human beings.”
It’s hard for me to gauge exactly how interesting a book like this may be to someone else, because when asked about my fantasy dream career, I say epidemiologist. And not the fun kind – the data wonk kind. I think objectively, this book is objectively “exciting” if you have a tolerance for fairly dry excitement, and a lot of details on slow, frustrating, painstaking searches for pathogens, outbreaks, sources of contamination, and underlying causes of the things that plague us. Despite the rather dramatic […]