Tag: Humanities Highlights

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery” by Beth Macy. 

About the Book: “The Knife Man” is a biography of maverick surgeon, “John Hunter:” the father of scientific surgery. Moore deep-dives into the murky depths of pre-enlightenment surgery and the (sometimes sketchy, sometimes shadowy) birth of modern surgical practice. 

Reasons to Read: If you enjoy reading about quacky medicine (bloodletting for every possible ailment), want to reinforce your gratitude for the 21st century (anesthetics!), or feel intrigued by sentences like, “Excitedly, he hurried the limb up to his attic” (Moore, 2005, p. 11). 

Reasons to Avoid: If you’re squeamish about rotting bodies (and physicians tasting them . . .), excising bullets with grime encrusted tools, cauldrons to boil down skeletons, bladder stones “the size of tennis balls” (p. 46), or grisly accounts of gonorrhea (one Georgian aristocrat had “at least” 19 bouts)  (p.128).  

Fun Facts: 

• Among many other firsts, John Hunter was the first person to successfully practice artificial insemination, way back in the 1770s (Ombelet and Robays, 2015).  
• John Hunter’s eclectic manor formed the basis for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. With his wide involvement in grave robbing rings, it’s not hard to imagine. (John Hunter Left a Body of Work Behind Him, 2019). 

References:

John Hunter Left a Body of Work Behind Him. (Oct. 4th, 2019). Scottish Field. 

Moore, Wendy. (2005). The Knife Man. Crown. 

Ombelet, W., & Robays, J. Van. (2015). Artificial insemination history: hurdles and milestones. Facts Views

Vis Obgyn, 7(2): 137–143. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498171/#:~:text=John%20Hunter%20wrote%20the%20first,the%20founder%20of%20scientific%20surgery%E2%80%9D.

Wilson, T. C., “The dissecting room,” OnView, accessed October 17,

2023, https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/13559.

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “Dopesick” by Beth Macy. 

About the Book: “Dopesick” is an inside look at America’s opioid crisis through the lens of big pharma, drug dealers, addicts, and the communities desperately trying to save them. Taking a zoom-in-out approach, Macy contextualizes several families of drug abusers and dealers (which are fluid categories) into the overall opioid epidemic. This microcosm forefronts the human suffering of decisions made tucked away in boardrooms and sales offices. 

What Makes it Essential: As a resident of Roanoke, VA since 1989, Macy’s reporting for The Roanoke Times positioned her to directly report on the disintegration of Appalachian communities (Weeks, 2022). Her 2012 book, Factory Man, covered the shuttering of Appalachian factories and helped her write the bigger picture of a broken community targeted by a predatory pharmaceutical company. 

Reasons to Read: “Dopesick” takes an uncomfortable look at the strategies big pharma uses to target doctors and how easy it can be to follow incentives. Macy investigates their rationalization while also providing examples of people who stand up against the system despite facing the same pressures. 

Caveats: While “Dopesick” discusses Purdue Pharma, it’s a book about the entirety of the crisis. For a deeper look into Purdue Pharma, Barry Meier’s “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic” helps complete the picture. 

Further Reading:

• The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin, by Tracey Helton Mitchell - which Beth Macy calls the best book about heroin recovery that she’s read (available at the DC public library)
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, by Sam Quinones (available at Himmelfarb)

References:

Weeks, Olivia. (2022, February 4th). Q&A: Beth Macy on her Journey from Paper Girl to Hard-Hitting Opioid Journalist. The Daily Yonder. https://dailyyonder.com/qa-beth-macy-on-her-journey-from-paper-girl-to-hard-hitting-opioid-journalist/2022/02/04/

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor. 

About the Book: “My Stroke of Insight” is a memoir and patient advocacy book by the neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor who suffered (and recovered) from a stroke caused by an arteriovenous malformation. The book reconstructs the morning of the hemorrhage, her experience of the stroke, and her complete recovery. 

What Makes This Book Invaluable: The book provides a rare first person account of a stroke from someone with the training and vocabulary to analyze their own experience. Dissolving her sense of self, the stroke gave Taylor eight years to reimagine the meaning of consciousness and self. 

Some Caveats: 

It’s worth noting that Taylor’s experiences are anecdotal (just one puzzle piece of the overall picture), and therefore, her experiences won’t relate to every stroke victim. 

Moreover, Taylor reports her experience of the stroke in almost mystical terms and relates feelings of oneness (observed by contemplative traditions worldwide) with right-brain neurological activity. It’s important to separate her experience from her conclusions and to maintain a receptive - but critical - eye for both. 

Reasons to Read: 

For the future physician, the book provides a striking reminder of what it’s like to be a patient. The second half focuses on her eight year recovery, the difficulties faced, and her accumulation of little victories, which culminates in advice for better patient care (see Appendix B). 

For the philosophically inclined, Taylor’s experience raises fascinating questions about the relationship between physiology and consciousness and how disruptions can help reveal how the brain works. 

Fun Facts: Beyond the TED Talk, “My Stroke of Insight” has also been adapted as a ballet called Orbo Novo by the Cedar Lake Ballet Company.