Tag: Arpan Banerjee
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Book review: Frames of Minds: A History of Neuropsychiatry on Screen
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England In this fascinating book, author Eelco Wijdicks traces the history of psychiatry and neuropsychiatry in cinema. From the beginnings of commercial film in Paris in 1895, directors and screenwriters have told medical stories, both as entertainment and as a medium for understanding various aspects of the human condition. Frames of Minds…
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Book review: Florence Nightingale’s Rivals: Nursing Through the Crimea
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Florence Nightingale is best remembered as the founder of modern nursing. She opened her famous nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, in 1860. Her principles of nurse training were based on her experiences in the Crimean War a few years earlier. In this interesting and well-written book, the author, herself a…
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Book review: A history of vaccines and anti-vaxxers
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Infectious diseases have been a scourge throughout human history. The first recorded epidemic was of the plague that occurred in Athens from 430–427 BC, chronicled in the writings of Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. In nineteenth-century Britain, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid, measles, smallpox, and cholera were major…
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Helen Rosaline Ashton: Physician and author
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Medicine has long been a fertile training ground for those who abandon their profession to become writers. Their number includes Anton Chekhov, William Somerset Maugham, John Keats, Mikhail Bulgakov, William Carlos Williams, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Helen Ashton has been largely forgotten as one of these medically trained authors. She was born on…
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Book review: Casanova and Enlightenment
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The eighteenth-century polymath Casanova is best remembered today for his amorous adventures. Sadly, his considerable contributions in a variety of fields of learning are often forgotten. Giacomo Casanova was a linguist, soldier, clergyman, entrepreneur, mathematician, diplomat, and conman. He spent time in prison but also was an accomplished man of letters…
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Book review: The Woman Who Revolutionised Nurses’ Training: The Life and Career of Rebecca Strong
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England When asked to name a famous nurse from the past, the most common name that rolls off people’s lips is nearly always Florence Nightingale. Sadly, many other pioneering nurses from yesteryear remain forgotten in spite of major contributions to their profession. In this new biography, the life of the pioneering nurse…
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Book review: X-ray
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England X-ray by Nicole Lobdell is the latest in the Bloomsbury Collection series “Object Lessons,” which examines the hidden and unexplored aspects of ordinary things that have become a part of modern life. X-rays have long been a source of fascination, not just to scientists and doctors for their medical uses, but…
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Book review: Scars and Stains: Lessons from Intensive Care
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England In his book Scars and Stains: Lessons from Intensive Care, Mark ZY Tan, a trained anesthetist and intensive care physician, tells stories of patients admitted to the ICU and the split-second clinical decisions and ethical dilemmas faced by the staff involved in their care. Although some of the stories are harrowing to…
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Book review: Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The subjects of ageing, death, and immortality have long preoccupied human thoughts and culture. The ancient Egyptians practiced mummification out of a belief in an afterlife. Buddhists and Hindus believe in reincarnation with the immortal soul living on in another body. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam also have rites and rituals that…
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Book review: Disease and Healing in the Indus Civilisation
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England The Indus (Harappan) civilisation was one of the three contemporaneous ancient civilisations, the others being the Egyptian and Mesopotamian. First excavated by the British in the 1920s, it existed from 3300–1300 BC, extending from the south in Gujarat to northwest India and Pakistan across the Indus and the now often dried…