Microbes And MysteryThe Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis By Goetz Thomas New York (NY) : Gotham Books , 2014 320 pp., $27.00

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930.

Dr Arthur Conan Doyle: the first portfolio GP?

Many readers instantly associate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his literary genius in creating the fictional detective duo Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Yet, delving more deeply, he practised as an apothecary and GP in Portsmouth and Plymouth, over a century ago (1882–1890). Around this time, he penned three short stories, Crabbe’s Practice1 (1884), Round the Red Lamp2 (1894), and The Stark Munr...

Microbes Go Manga MasayukiIshikawaMoyasimon: Tales of Agriculture2009Ballantine BooksNew York, NY, USA240 pp. $10.99

In the West, comics are traditionally seen by the " literati " as a rather low-brow medium pandering to sweaty-palmed, superhero-obsessed teenagers. Although this perception may contain a grain of truth, the genre as a whole has long since outgrown this well-worn stereotype. This will come as no surprise to the Japanese, who have considered manga (Japanese comics) part of the established litera...

Drug Seekers Brent R.StockwellThe Quest for the Cure: The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of Medicines2011Columbia University PressNew York, NY, USA284 pp. $27.95

Presuming you’re a biomedical researcher of some sort, try these questions. Have you ever had difficulty explaining what your work is like to someone completely outside of the field? Have you ever wished for a short book that would explain to your nonscientific friends and relatives just what it is that you do with all of your time? And why it so often seems very complicated? If so, The Quest f...

It’s Revolting! by Thomas Nagel | The New York Review of Books

Taken together, the emotion of disgust consisted of a rigid, reliable type of motivation and behavior, paired with an open-ended database of elicitors and a flexible acquisition system, enhanced with a sentimental signaling system available for the transmission of cultural information. As new adaptive problems arose, these features, and the mix of rigidity and flexibility they offered, made the...