Gavin Francis

Before​ stethoscopes were invented, physicians would listen to their patients’ hearts by laying one ear directly onto the skin of the chest. We’re accustomed to laying our heads against the breasts of our lovers, our parents or our children, but once or twice when I’ve rushed out on an urgent house call, leaving my stethoscope behind, I’ve had to rediscover the...

There’s a scene in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta’s character, a hitman called Vincent Vega, who has escorted his boss’s wife home after an evening out, returns from the bathroom to find her unconscious on the floor. Mia (Uma Thurman) has taken a bag of heroin from his jacket pocket and, mistaking the white powder for cocaine, snorted a line and...

I was 19 years old when I first held a human brain. It was heavier than I had anticipated; grey, firm and laboratory-cold. Its surface was slippery and smooth, like an algae-covered stone pulled from a riverbed. I had a terror of dropping it and seeing its tight contours burst open on the tiled floor.

It was the start of my second year at medical school. The first year had been a helter-skelter...