DEATH, DISEASE & DISSECTION

Sub-titled 'The Life of A Surgeon-Apothecary 1750-1850', imagine performing surgery on a patient without anaesthetic, administering medicine that could kill or cure, picture dissecting mouldering corpses purchased from the Resurrection Man. During the 18th and 19th centuries new treatments were developed and medical training improved, but with a physician's fees out of the reach of ordinary people, most relied on the advice of their local apothecary. These men were the general practitioners of their time, making up and prescribing pills and potions from everything from a toothache to childbirth. Many famous names trained as surgeon- apothecaries including the poet John Keats who worked at Guy's Hospital in London. The book looks at the vital role these men played during their training and within their communities, details many of the treatments they offered, both reputable and 'quack', and sets their lives against the shocking sights and sounds experienced in workhouse infirmaries, hospitals and operating theatres of the time. One chapter looks at the controversy caused as the man-midwife gradually usurped the female midwife. Readers may be familiar with the description given by Fanny Burney of her mastectomy or Samuel Pepys of the operation to remove 'the stone' in his bladder with pain only lessoned by alcohol or opiates. We meet Robert Storrs, Henry Jephson, Charles Turner Thackrah, Hampton Weekes and his family, Henry Stephens who moved from surgeon to ink manufacturer of much fame, and James Parkinson who described the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and who inadvertently became involved in a plot to kill George III, and ended up hunting dinosaurs. And Keats, who trained under the provisions of the very important Apothecaries Act of 1815 and we learn that the redrafting of the old Poor Law into the new Poor Law of 1834 was such a make-or-break issue for many doctors of the time. 149pp, large paperback, illustrated.