- Published: 1 May 2008
- ISBN: 9781845950132
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 304
- RRP: $32.99
Digging Up the Dead
Uncovering the Life and Times of an Extraordinary Surgeon
- Published: 1 May 2008
- ISBN: 9781845950132
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 304
- RRP: $32.99
Besides being disgustingly entertaining ... these shocking stories are valuable history. As a doctor himself, Burch evokes the tensions between brutality and beautiful science by informing the historical narrative with his own memoirs
New Scientist
Druin Burch has written a detailed and deeply felt biography of this colourful figure... Digging Up the Dead is not simply the biography of a great surgeon, but a brilliant portrait of surgical life before the coming of anaesthesia, anitisepsis, antibiotics, and professional regulations
Literary Review
An ambitious and convincing attempt to bring back to life the man who was responsible for so many less respectable acts of resurrection
New Statesman
A physician himself, Burch brings a special insight into episodes whose significance would doubtless be lost or bungled in the hands of another writer... His detailed analyses of early nineteenth-century medical procedures for treating complicated conditions...are masterful, deft and humane
Times Literary Supplement
Vivid account of 18th-century surgeon Astley Cooper's life... Burch, also a doctor, mixes his narrative with recollections from his own practice, which serve to enhance this lively biography...All in all a jolly good read
BBC History Magazine
[An] evocative biography... Burch (clearly smitten) dares the reader to empathise with "this vain, egotistical, nepotistic and rather wonderful" man, with considerable success
The Lancet