Butcher father of modern gyno-psychiatry
"In the 1840s, a young man named Silas Weir begins practicing medicine in Pennsylvania. Though he is considered inept by family, neighbors, and even his mentor, Dr. Weir discovers he has a gift for phlebotomy, treating patients by bleeding them to purify their bodies. But when an experimental proced...
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Alfred A. Knopf,
2024.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | "In the 1840s, a young man named Silas Weir begins practicing medicine in Pennsylvania. Though he is considered inept by family, neighbors, and even his mentor, Dr. Weir discovers he has a gift for phlebotomy, treating patients by bleeding them to purify their bodies. But when an experimental procedure goes horribly wrong, Dr. Weir is forced to start over, relocating his family to Trenton, New Jersey, and taking a position at the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics. There, in the hopes of proving his detractors wrong, Dr. Weir continues practicing dangerous procedures, and soon becomes infatuated with Brigit - a pregnant woman he treats - whom he tries to take her under his wing as an apprentice. As Dr. Weir's experiments grow more intense - and as he isolates himself from his family and the world beyond the facility - he grows obsessed with Brigit and the other residents who remain at his mercy, and before long, establishes himself as "the father of gyno-psychiatry." "-- |
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| Item Description: | "A novel"-from cover. This is a work of fiction incorporating episodes from the lives of the historic J. Marion Sims, M.D. (1813-1883), "The Father of Modern Gynecology"; Silas Weir Mitchell, M.D. (1829-1914), "The Father of Medical Neurology"; and Henry Cotton, M.D. (1876-1933), Director of the New Jersey Lunatic Asylum, 1907-1930. |
| Physical Description: | 331 pages ; 25 cm |
| ISBN: | 9780593537770 0593537777 |
| Author Notes: | She is the author of numerous novels and collections of short stories. Her works include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Bellefleur, You Must Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, Marya : A Life, and Give Me Your Heart. She has received numerous awards including the National Book Award for Them, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. She was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her title Lovely, Dark, Deep. She also wrote a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. In 2015, her novel The Accursed became listed as a bestseller on the iBooks chart. She worked as a professor of English at the University of Windsor, before becoming the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She and her late husband Raymond J. Smith operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. (Bowker Author Biography) |
