Sherwin B. Nuland – författare

Surgeon, scholar, best-selling author, Sherwin B. Nuland tells the strange story of Ignác Semmelweis with urgency and the insight gained from his own studies and clinical experience. Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately—childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared—they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end.

In this gripping exploration of the organs of the body and the myths associated with them, Sherwin B. Nuland M.D., the author of the award winning HOW WE DIE (Vintage), once again displays his ability to combine clarity, compassion, and knowledge to shed light on the working of our bodies from a surgeon's perspective. Dr. Nuland recounts legends about the functions and 'personalities' of the stomach, liver, heart, spleen, and uterus, and, in riveting vignettes of the surgery he has performed, describes the actual surgery and explains the connections between myth and reality. He reflects on humanity's impulse to invent explanations for things we don't understand and shows we have never abandoned long-held superstitions. Eloquent and informative, THE MYSTERIES WITHIN is an extraordinary synthesis of science and folklore, medicine and myth.