Wow! eBook
Not Your Ordinary Doctor
Author(s): Jim Leavesley (Author)
- Publisher: Allen & Unwin
- Publication Date: 12 Jan. 2010
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 368 pages
- ISBN-10: 1742373305
- ISBN-13: 9781742373300
Book Description
Throughout history, many doctors have worked outside the occupation for which they were originally trained. Not Your Ordinary Doctor reveals sixty such medical truants who found fame in fields other than medicine. Meet Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for Sherlock Holmes; cringe as Stalin tortures each of his eight doctors; follow John Keats, who abandons medicine to pursue his literary career. Within these pages are doctors who attended rulers such as Elizabeth I, Napoleon and Alexander the Great; artists, musicians and writers such as Somerset Maugham and Anton Chekhov; sporting heroes and adventurers including W.G. Grace and Che Guevara; and on a darker note, mass murderers like Hastings Banda and Buck Ruxton. Not Your Ordinary Doctor is a titillating collection filled with historical curiosities, fascinating whimsy and fresh speculation. These stories are by turns heroic and absurd, dazzling and ghoulish, inspired and tragic and, in the hands of master storyteller Jim Leavesley, never dull.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Jim Leavesley retired after 33 years as a physician in general practice. He is the coauthor of How Isaac Newton Lost His Marbles and What Killed Jane Austen? For the past 25 years he has presented a weekly medical history segment on the radio, and in 1993, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for “services to medicine in general and medical history in particular.”
