Gavin Francis

After​ I finish my morning clinic as a GP there are a few tasks that I have to get done before heading out on home visits. The first is to check my inbox. There are always some messages from the government, public health alerts, emails from hospital consultants and district nurses with concerns about mutual patients, emails from the local medical school regarding students. Most GPs are...

The human brain​ is softer than tofu, squishier than a jellyfish, slightly more robust than toothpaste. Brain surgeons tend not to use scalpels because the substance they work on is too delicate; instead they use ultrasound and suction probes, using breaths of air to suck away diseased bits of matter. A thin layer of cerebrospinal fluid – a hundred millilitres or so – cushions the...

Acouple​ of years ago a patient I’ll call Joan came to my GP clinic to tell me that her right leg had stopped working. ‘Sometimes it’ll hold me upright,’ she said, ‘and sometimes it won’t.’ I took a look at her legs. Her thigh muscles on the right seemed to me a bit weaker than on the left, and her reflexes were unusually brisk; when I tapped her...

Functional​ disorders are conditions in which the body’s normal processes are disrupted, but for which no organic cause can be determined. They do, though, have characteristics evident to a trained eye, since the sufferers experience sensations or disabilities that don’t make anatomical sense. This doesn’t mean that the symptoms are in any way less real or debilitating....

The average adult​ carries about two kilograms of bacteria on and in their body. That’s more bacterial cells than human ones, trillions of them making a home on our skin and in our guts (the ‘microbiome’). We need them to help digest food, to fine-tune our immune systems, and to protect us against harmful micro-organisms. If you get ill with one of the nasty ones, the...