Sawbones

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Catherine Johnson is a children’s novelist of Jamaican and Welsh heritage. She was born in London and much of Sawbones is set there. She writes stories with diverse characters in the middle of the action – including Ezra, the protagonist of Sawbones, who is a mixed-race former slave. This is my favorite podcast, so I was excited to get my hands on this book. Unfortunately it fell a little flat. First, if you listen to the podcast or enjoy medical history this book is not going to add to you knowledge. That isn’t a negative. Just be aware that it’s more of an introduction to the subject than an immersion into it. Second, the podcast is hilarious; the book not so much. The dynamic the two authors have verbally doesn’t translate well into the written word. I’ve experienced the same when reading other books by stand up comedians. Lastly, the book needed better editing. I found multiple typos and grammatical errors. This is what bothered me the most as it’s a pet peeve of mine. What about a magic belt that one could wrap around themselves, turn on the battery and you had a solution for nausea? Mummy meat crumbled into tinctures to stop bleeding? Well that a few of many of the disturbing things one will read in this book. It does have a few things, like some of the uses for honey, that has a certainly validity to this day. Some of the most visceral moments are concentrated in a chapter on cholera. Justin warns that “things are about to get so, so bad,” and they do. Sydnee does not flinch when describing the work of Max Joseph von Pettenkofer, a 19th century hygienist who was so (wrongly) convinced that cholera could not spread to people who practiced good hygiene that he drank diarrhea from a patient who had died of the disease. Naturally, he got cholera — but he survived and proclaimed his experiment a success.

The Sawbones Book: The Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern

This quote sums up the novel perfectly. In 1792, sixteen-year-old Ezra McAdam assists at the dissection table as a gifted apprentice to a high regarded London surgeon, learning how to reveal the secrets each body hides. His age is an estimate based on medical measurements as he, a mulatto of mixed race, was bought in Spanish Town by his master, Mr McAdam. The skills he learns as a surgeon’s apprentice will serve him well for life.How will our actual healing methods be evaluated in the retrospective? These non-individualized therapies based on pharmacological hammers and sometimes unsafe treatments. That fallible people cut into other people with sharpened steel. The interdependence of politics and the pharmaceutical industry. And how little we knew about the body and its functional mechanisms. To seek humility in the mistakes of the past would be good to prevent that such erroneous paths are not gone longer than necessary. Humans took a long, weird road to modern medicine. We don’t have everything figured out yet, but at least we’ve learned not to drink the feces of cholera victims and never to plug dental cavities with a lizard’s liver — unlike some of our ancestors. Incredibly condescending and crass because the authors think being crass is amusing. I probably would have found some of the jokes funny 30 years ago, but they're just annoyingly puerile. Sydnee: I enjoy learning these things. I enjoy telling Justin about them. And the fact that people like to listen is just the icing. We knew pretty early on that, “Hey, this would make a really good book.” One incarnation could have been a set of trivia articles, but we really wanted to bring to the book what we bring to the podcasts, which is our interactions with each other and the humor. FAMILY PRACTICE PODCASTING Coauthors Sydnee McElroy (left) and her husband Justin McElroy (right) have hosted the Sawbones podcast since 2013. Courtesy of S. and J. McElroy Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not! But for thousands of years, people have done things like this—and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare . . . and some of the terrifying detours along the way.

Sawbones Book: The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern

Johnson has skilfully balanced what is heart-breaking and harrowing with scenes of friendship, kindness, warmth and humour (oh how I loved the night soil scene!), and Freedom is ultimately a hope-filled tale set in a world on the brink of abolishing the slave trade. Last days of school… that final exam… the awkward visit to say goodbye to some of the teachers. Where will it all lead? Iestyn can’t be sure. Plotting a definite course is not the thing. For him, there’s more life in charging around the forestry in his mate’s car. Until the crash, that is. Until his mate takes up with Martine. Until Iestyn himself has his new job to worry about – and until, more unexpectedly, someone moves in on his feelings with such force that his world is turned upside down. Catherine Johnson, of Jamaican-Welsh heritage, grew up in north London. She has written over 20 novels for young readers. Her most recent historical novels were nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Sawbones won the Young Quills Award for best historical fiction for 12+, and The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo was nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the YA Book Prize. Heute liegt der Hemmschuh der modernen Medizin in dem Problem der Einseitigkeit. Etwa das Human Genom Projekt, dass von allen andere Forschungsrichtungen die Fördermittel abzog. Weiters wurde die Forschung einseitig in eine Richtung gedrängt und alle anderen Ansätze und Theorien viel zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Ironischerweise kommt man jetzt zu keinen weiteren Ergebnissen. Im Gegenteil, die unterschätzte RNA spielte eine viel größere Rolle als angenommen. Subjektiv gesagt, hätte man zwar früher darauf kommen können, dass der Quellcode RNA etwas mit der Software DNA zu tun haben können. Aber whatever. Dazu könnte man noch weitere Beispiele aus jüngerer Vergangenheit ausgraben und die Zukunft wird noch genug ans Tageslicht fördern. Sara and Mina have been best friends for years. So when Sara gets hold of some Tarot cards and suggests they start telling fake fortunes Mina plays along, helping Sara make sure her predictions are right. But soon Sara’s predictions become all too accurate, and she’s dragged in to a dark world of magic and power that she can’t understand. Can Mina save her?Sydnee: There’s a ton to talk about, but it’s also still relevant today, sometimes directly. Some of the medicines that we learn about — forms of them are still on the market.

Sawbones (a novella) – STUART MACBRIDE Sawbones (a novella) – STUART MACBRIDE

Meanwhile, magician’s daughter, Loveday Finch, thinks her father was murdered and enlists Ezra’s help to find out why. The plot takes us through the streets of 18th-century London to vastly differing settings from the operating theatre at St Bartholomew’s, the damp vaults of Newgate Prison, to the inner corridors of the Ottoman Embassy. However, the wealth of detail never slows what is a tightly woven plot. For a small book, this was filled with MANY descriptions of surgeries and body studies, and I did not mind it one bit. If anything, I enjoyed it to the fullest, and learnt even more about medicine in the past. I loved the characters so deeply, and will forever carry them with me. I loved the setting, the aesthetic, the twists of the plot, the writing, the inspiration from the Hunterian museum AND the mystery. In der Retrospektive mutet vieles unglaublich an und man kann das Leid der Patienten, oder eher Opfer, nur schwer ermessen. Nur, wie kam es zu diesen fragwürdigen Ansätzen, die jeder guten klinischen Praxis und wissenschaftlicher Herangehensweise entbehrten? Was waren die Ursachen so vieler Irrwege? Sawbones’s narration was as clean cut and objective as the scalpel and the mind of he that wields them. Ezra tells us his most peculiar adventure in a fashion that shows a mind brought up surrounded by reality and reason, where no laws are defied and common sense and logic are the rules that must be abided. The language and style were faithful to such a mind and showed great care and research on behalf of the very clever author. Every detail was delivered with some detachment; detachment that I would also expect in someone who has made the examination of death his business, and therefore no description appeared or transpired as gruesome or stomach churning. The critical eye delivered an accurate picture allowing both my mind and his to soak in the relevant information to attempt to solve the ever growing puzzle of bodies.Walang boring part kasi yung pagtry ni Ezra and Loveday iuncover yung mystery ng pagkamatay ng mga taong malapit sakanila, medyo thrilling. Yung kagustuhan nilang magrevenge, napasok tuloy sila sa kung anu anong kaguluhan na. Medyo adventurous ang kinalabasan. Sawbones A forensic murder mystery set in 1792. Ezra McAdam is apprenticed to a top London anatomist and surgeon and can read a dead body as well as you or I might read a book. But when an unusual body arrives for dissection, events spiral out of control. Ezra meets Loveday Finch, hot tempered magician’s assistant and together they unearth a trail of murder and international secrets…

Sawbones’ invites readers to laugh at the bizarre history of ‘Sawbones’ invites readers to laugh at the bizarre history of

The Sawbones Book is exactly what it advertises: a delightful tour of medical history, the things we as a species have gotten right and the many, many wwe have gotten wrong, with humorous commentary among historical and medical facts. If you enjoy medical history and are looking to dip just a bit more deeply, or if you have a passing interest and like the occasional dumb joke, then you can't go wrong with this book. When we meet him his biggest concern is not losing the girl he is giving his attention to now that he has come of age, and being taken seriously in the blooming surgeon community given the colouring of his skin. But when a corpse turns up on his master’s anatomizing table with a couple too many unexplained quirks, ones that might get undesired attention and might imply that the poor soul may actually be missed and claimed, Ezra raises his concerns with his master. Add to the mix a red headed girl with a fiery and willful personality who seeks revenge for the death of her father which she claims is murder, and you have yourself a mystery. But the mystery goes beyond that. There are more ingredients to this recipe, and the intrigues run deeper than the scalpel has initially cut and further than the streets of London. It's fine. The problem is twofold: it's basically a retread of the show so far, with very little new material; and it tries too hard to capture the essence of the show, which is the bantering dynamic between Sydnee [pause for cheers to die down] and Justin. But that dynamic doesn't translate to print well, or at least, it has not here. Justin: There’s nothing new under the sun, right? If you understand how we have marketed and sold fake cures to people in the past, you realize that people are doing it now. You can have a good laugh about it, but then realize, “Oh, wait a minute. It’s the exact same techniques that have been used to sell cocaine and cough syrup for all these years.” In a very different time and place, Lauren Bogle, a mixed race girl discovered by a modelling agent on a school trip to London, is desperate to escape from her boring provincial life. Her guardian is dead set against the idea, fearful of what will happen to Lauren when the work starts coming in, the cameras start snapping and the vultures start circling. But Lauren can’t see beneath the glossy photos, the expensive apartments and the charisma of it all. She can’t see she is treading a path already walked by those closest to her, a path that leads to murder, to prison and to death.

Older children and teenagers will enjoy these compelling stories set in times past - from exciting adventures to thought-provoking tales of troubled times. Johnson’s heroine has a brave and endearing voice….I loved the visual detail.’– Adele Geras Times Educational Supplement What initially caught my attention with Sawbones was the somewhat dark and a little macabre cover, and subsequently the very short and brief synopsis that hinted to one mystery and perhaps an even bigger one lying beneath.