Bodysnatchers to Lifesavers

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About the Book: 

From dissecting bodies ‘donated’ by murderers to developing lifesaving treatments, the Edinburgh medical community has always been innovative and challenged entrenched medical ideas. This has ranged from setting up an inspirational public health system to discovering chloroform as an anaesthetic, which was fiercely opposed as pain relief for women during labour.

Bodysnatchers to Lifesavers gives a fascinating insight into the development of modern medicine and the leading role that Edinburgh played on the medical stage.

The tale of Edinburgh’s medical past is told through the stories of colourful characters including the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare, the evolutionist Charles Darwin, surgeons Joseph Lister and James Syme as well as Sophia Jex-Blake, who headed the campaign for women’s right to study medicine, and ‘James Barry’, Britain’s first female doctor.

Reviews: 

A fascinating study of how science progresses, and why it sometimes does so at a seemingly slow rate. SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS

An excellent account of how Edinburgh University Medical School has produced pioneers in anatomy, surgery and research for 300 years. THE SCOTSMAN

About the Author:

TARA WOMERSLEY works on press and public relations for the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She started her career in journalism and has worked for newspapers including The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times and is a former health correspondent for The Scotsman. She was also involved in coordinating the media launch of the Make Poverty History campaign in Australia, while also working in media relations for an overseas aid agency.

DOROTHY CRAWFORD qualified in medicine from St Thomas's Hospital, London and gained a PhD from Bristol University. She was appointed to the Robert Irvine Chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Edinburgh in 1997 and was made Assistant Principal for Public Understanding of Medicine in 2007. She has published around 200 research papers on this subject and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2001 and awarded an OBE for services to medicine and higher education in 2005.