These tales of diseases and cures by a French surgeon and his cartoonist sidekick will have you in stitches
It has already been widely observed that in recent weeks quite a lot of people have apparently become, virtually overnight and minus any relevant degree course, epidemiologists or virologists or other experts in infectious diseases. However, should you happen to be one of those seemingly rare souls who still feels shamefully ignorant when it comes to such matters – I am certainly one such person – then I have good news in the form of Medicine: A Graphic History. A collaboration between Dr Jean-Noël Fabiani, the head of cardiac surgery at George Pompidou European hospital in Paris, and Philippe Bercovici, the cartoonist best known for his series The Women in White, this utterly brilliant comic will feed you vital and amazing information so painlessly you’ll barely realise how much you’re learning.
As Fabiani writes in his introduction, the history of medicine is deeply serious; so much is at stake. But it’s also “embroidered with a rich seam of anecdote” – a series of scenes “from the familiar human comedy, where scholars and social climbers, charlatans and saints, amateurs and professionals merrily rub shoulders”. What this means in practice is that while he takes in such topics as the development of surgery and the discovery of circulation of blood, the fight against infection and the search for effective contraception, he’s still more than happy to poke fun at the misconceptions both of the historical past and of the individuals who populated it (the latter often hampered by a blindness born of pomposity, competitiveness and, sometimes, religious faith). In this, Bercovici, whose drawings are reminiscent of those of the late Albert Uderzo, the illustrator of Asterix, is his perfect ally. The characters in his strips wear such hilarious expressions – even, or perhaps especially, when they’ve got the pox – that they function as medicine themselves, a tincture that’s all but guaranteed to make the reader laugh out loud.
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