How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2023; Picador, 2025; 541 pages) There is no Blueprint There is a certain frisson when reading something that overthrows long-held assumptions. And one persistent and still widely taught idea is that our DNA holds the blueprint for everything… Continue reading Life Isn’t Easy
Tag: Medicine
Messenger
“Breaking Through” by Katalin Karikó 2023, Penguin / Random House, 322 pp. From there to here Katalin Karikó’s story is not a simple “rags-to-riches” tale, although her humble and unlikely origins in a rural village in communist Hungary, and the journey to worldwide acclaim and (after the end of this book) a Nobel Prize, would… Continue reading Messenger
Other Worlds
A History of Delusions: The Glass King, a Substitute Husband and a Walking Corpse by Victoria Shepherd (2022, Oneworld Publications) Distorted Mirrors A book of famous case histories of delusional individuals, could so easily become a distasteful sideshow, like visiting a Hall of Mirrors, or paying your penny to gawp at the inmates in Bedlam.… Continue reading Other Worlds
Picture This
Welcome to my brain! It’s dark in here (apparently),
Thinking Differently
Thoughts in Mental Health Awareness Week 9-15 May 2022 Fear of the unknown When I was in my teens I was afraid. Unnerved by what and who I did not know, and unsettled by media’s reflex association between mental illness and violence (which still persists in the lazy tabloids). In my ignorance these feelings were… Continue reading Thinking Differently
Book Review – The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness
“… the roots of the problems are not so much in the individuals’ bodies or brains, but in the society in which they live.”