PublishedText Publishing, May 2017 |
ISBN9781925498202 |
FormatSoftcover, 405 pages |
Dimensions23.4cm × 15.4cm |
Haunting, lyrical, sometimes shattering, Anaesthesia leavens science with personal experience - and
brings an intensely human curiosity to the unknowable realm beyond consciousness.
A hundred and seventy years ago many people would have chosen to die rather than undergo theordeal of surgery. Today, even major operations are routine. Anaesthesia has made them possible.
But how much do we really know about what happens when we go under? Can we hear what's going on around us? Is pain still pain if we are not awake to feel it, or don't remember it afterwards? How does the unconscious mind deal with the body's experience of being cut open and ransacked? And what happens to those rare patients who wake up under the knife?
Haunting, lyrical, sometimes shattering, Anaesthesia leavens science with personal experience - and
brings an intensely human curiosity to the unknowable realm beyond consciousness.
Marijke is the Customer Service Supervisor at Boffins and has been a Boffin for over five years, and a bird fanatic for even longer. She reads anything interesting.
Hundreds of thousands of people undergo general anaesthetic for surgery every day, but this relatively recent discovery raises questions about our consciousness and our brains that we’re only just starting to consider. Australian writer and journalist Kate Cole-Adams talks about her own experiences with anaesthesia as well as studies and interviews with patients, for a book that gives us no easy answers, but is an engrossing and thoughtful exploration of medical science and what it means to be ‘us’