booktrade.info - Book Reviews - Medical London By Richard Barnett

Monday 13th February

Medical London By Richard Barnett

Posted at 11:34AM Tuesday 30 Dec 2008

Medical London
ISBN: 9780955876103

It is rare to be able to review not just the contents of a book but also the way it looks and feels. Medical London comes in a cloth-bound slip case that contains a book of essays and a series of fold-out maps that detail six medical walks around London, as well as a hardback directory of the main sites and addresses throughout the city.

As a book of many different parts, it is the perfect reflection of its subject matter: the history of London and medicine. Like two white-aproned anatomists, debut author and historian Richard Barnett and seasoned chronicler of madness, medical experimentation and drugs Mike Jay stand above the still-breathing body of the city. Through a careful reading of the lesions, scar tissue and marks, they record a full history of the sickly patient.

What they reveal is more than the expected symptoms of epidemics and quackery that have stalked the streets of the capital for centuries. They unveil a new and thrilling pathology – the city and the patient are one and the same: changing attitudes to disease have often influenced the city, while ideas about what the city is have guided the hand of the doctor by the bedside. The anatomists' report proves that medicine is not just a science, that urban living is not solely an art.

Medical London encourages the reader to enjoy the city to the full.

Financial Times Review

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