Lisandra Maia Maia itibaren Gimonde, 5300, Portekiz
I liked this book alot. It was confusing in the beginning, but got better as it went on. I wish they had played up the romance a little more though.
I learned so much about Abraham and Sarah based on Jewish and Islamic traditions, apocrophon, and better translations of biblical texts. Some common misconceptions about his life were cleared up for me.
This is one of the best popular medical histories I've yet to read. It is extremely well-researched and I definitely believe that anybody could pick it up with no sense of the history behind the state of medicine in the 1850s and they could get an excellent feel for not only medical theory of the time but also the atmosphere of the lower-class areas of London. I particularly liked the way that the author explained the logic behind the miasma theory of disease as well as the challenges with early anesthesia and the link these two had with each other through the development of knowledge regarding the dispersal of gases. One of the things that I liked the most about this book was that the author didn't take a presentist point of view. That is, he didn't just the past by today's standards. Yes, the miasma theory turned out to be incorrect, but he went through the critiques of the theory not exclusively from a twenty-first century standpoint but through the eyes of one of its first critics, Dr. Jonathan Snow. Highly recommended.