Roy Porter - Blood & Guts (2002)
Science Related – 200 pages – my copy (hardback; 2002) bought for £1 from Plymouth Library
- 2 nods out of 5 -
Blood and Guts – what an intriguing title! That was the Worm’s first impression when picking up Roy Porter’s short history of medicine, promising a quick and succinct journey through the ages in all themes and issues. Exactly what a reader would need when attempting to fill in the gaps of a large and complex history, full off interesting snippets of trivia and facts.
Although the title suggests a playful tone – including the book’s cover in which a cartoon of an eighteenth century gentleman squirms as a doctor, rather painfully, inserts a needle into his nose – Porter’s prose starkly contrasts. The reader is given a rather dry recitation of past ages, covering the major themes: disease, doctors, the laboratory, therapies, surgeries, and the hospital. Rather than the expected easy narration – ala Bill Bryson – we are dipped into various terminologies, theories and practitioners. There is so much, in such a short space, it is akin to information overload.
However, a greater accusation to the author’s abilities is the book’s likeness to articles upon Wikipedia. There is little humour, little excitement; but rather a Gradgrind reliance upon facts, facts and just the facts. The Worm has no wish to tarnish Porter’s credentials: the book’s jacket trumpets them just fine (before his recent passing he was Professor in Social History of Medicine at University College London). But this knowledge does not translate to a science lay-worm.
Blood & Guts has one redeeming feature: its illustrations. Each of them are wonderful and enlightening, with images throughout history fantastically picked by the author to adorn the text. True 5 nodder illustration; but the book itself fails to deliver on the Worm’s initial expectations. For the fun and the facts, a reader would be better served by buying a copy of Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.
