The Body in the Library provides a nuanced and realistic picture of how medicine and society have abetted and thwarted each other ever since the lawyers behind the French Revolution
banished the clergy and replaced them with doctors, priests of the body. Ranging from Charles Dickens to Oliver Sacks, Anton Chekhov to Raymond Queneau, Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, Miguel
Torga to Guido Ceronetti,The Body in the Library is an anthology of poems, stories, journal entries, Socratic dialogue, table-talk, clinical vignettes, aphorisms, and excerpts written by
doctor-writers themselves.
Engaging and provocative, philosophical and instructive, intermittently funny and sometimes appalling, this anthology sets out to stimulate and entertain. With an acerbic introduction and witty
contextual preface to each account, it will educate both patients and doctors curious to know more about the historical dimensions of medical practice. Armed with a first-hand experience of
liberal medicine and knowledge of several languages, Iain Bamforth has scoured the literatures of Europe to provide a well-rounded and cross-cultural sense of what it means to be a doctor
entering the twenty-first century.
From the Hardcover edition.
