Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher
Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul
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Narrated by:
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Jean Ann Douglass
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By:
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Brandy Schillace
About this listen
The “delightfully macabre” (The New York Times) true tale of a brilliant and eccentric surgeon...and his quest to transplant the human soul.
In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain?
Dr. Robert White was a friend to two popes and a founder of the Vatican’s Commission on Bioethics. He developed lifesaving neurosurgical techniques still used in hospitals today and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. But like Dr. Jekyll before him, Dr. White had another identity. In his lab, he was waging a battle against the limits of science and against mortality itself - working to perfect a surgery that would allow the soul to live on after the human body had died.
This “fascinating” (The Wall Street Journal), “provocative” (The Washington Post) tale follows his decades-long quest into tangled matters of science, Cold War politics, and faith, revealing the complex (and often murky) ethics of experimentation and remarkable innovations that today save patients from certain death. It’s a “masterful” (Science) look at our greatest fears and our greatest hopes - and the long, strange journey from science fiction to science fact.
©2021 Brandy Schillace. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Spirited and breezily provocative.... White’s unorthodox quest made national news several times over the course of his long career, but in Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher, Brandy Schillace finally gives it the thoughtful book-length treatment it deserves.” (The Washington Post)
“Engrossing. Schillace is a first-rate historian with the perceptive eye of a storyteller.” (Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times best-selling author of The Butchering Art)
“A rollicking, irresistible tale of doctors playing God, science facing off with ideology, and fate being sorely tempted at every turn.” (Robert Kolker, New York Times best-selling author of Hidden Valley Road)
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Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.
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I love this book!
- By Kristin on 08-25-19
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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State of the Heart
- Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease
- By: Haider Warraich
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In State of the Heart, the journey to rid the world of heart disease is shown to be reflective of the journey of medical science at large. We are learning not only that women have as much heart disease as men, but that the type of heart disease women experience is diametrically different from that in men. We are learning that heart disease and cancer may have more in common than we could have imagined. And we are learning how human evolution itself may have led to the epidemic of heart disease
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Good information, bad organization
- By Conor Cox on 09-03-19
By: Haider Warraich
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Shocked
- Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead
- By: David Casarett M.D.
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Not too long ago, there was no coming back from death. But now, with revolutionary medical advances, death has become just another serious complication. As a young medical student, Dr. David Casarett was inspired by the story of a two-year-old girl named Michelle Funk. Michelle fell into a creek and was underwater for over an hour. When she was found she wasn't breathing, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. That drowning should have been fatal. But after three hours of persistent work, a team of doctors and nurses was able to bring her back.
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Dead vs. Sincerely Dead
- By Gillian on 06-24-16
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The Problem of Alzheimer's
- How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It
- By: Jason Karlawish
- Narrated by: Jason Karlawish, Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. Sixteen million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their 70s and 80s, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis.
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A must read
- By kara kuntz on 05-20-21
By: Jason Karlawish
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Tomorrowland
- Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact
- By: Steven Kotler
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Discover bestselling author Steven Kotler has written extensively about those pivotal moments when science fiction became science fact...and fundamentally reshaped the world. Now he gathers the best of his best, updated and expanded upon, to guide listeners on a mind-bending tour of the far frontier, and how these advances are radically transforming our lives.
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Covers a lot of different topics in many industries
- By ErnieA on 06-27-15
By: Steven Kotler
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
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The Emperor of All Maladies
- A Biography of Cancer
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance but also of hubris, arrogance, paternalism, and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer".
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Incredible
- By S.R.E. on 03-02-16
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The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
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Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
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Flu
- The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
- By: Gina Kolata
- Narrated by: Gina Kolata
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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Feeling feverish, tired, or achy? Listening to Gina Kolata's engrossing account of the 1918 Influenza epidemic is sure to give you the chills. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and considers what can be done to prevent it.
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overexcited
- By Marilyn on 07-23-03
By: Gina Kolata
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Polio
- An American Story
- By: David M. Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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This comprehensive and gripping narrative, which received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for history, covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk's killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin's live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.
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Wonderful
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 07-22-08
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
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The Family That Couldn't Sleep
- A Medical Mystery
- By: D.T. Max
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For 200 years, a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. What these strange conditions share is their cause: prions.
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A great scientific mystery
- By David on 11-04-06
By: D.T. Max
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James Martin
- 05-12-21
What If?
I enjoyed the book! it was a fascinating story that makes you think what if?
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- Jacob
- 03-22-21
Amazing!
It really is a shame that ethics and human sensibilities have held back the research to make the "White Surgery" a reality. Maybe one day soon...
Excellent book and narration. The ending brings it all together perfectly.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Reyes
- 05-12-21
Great!
This is a great book. Intelligently written. I enjoyed this book very much. Thank you
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- TheTostu
- 04-12-23
Disturbing, yet that's the entire point
I have no idea what people criticizing this book for being too graphic or triggering have in mind.
Book about the history of surgeries and organ transplantations is, OF COURSE, filled with detailed descriptions of surgeries and transplantations. Many topics mentioned are revolving around the questions of morality, the border between life and death, tests on animals and other disturbing topics.
So, think about that before reading and do not pick up this book if you are not happy with these themes.
For the rest, I will seriously recommend it. It shows how fluid the border between life and death were just a few decades ago. It also shows how some operations have been perceived as sci-fi at first, a blasphemy later and routine nowadays.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-10-23
Good book, goofy narrator...
Narrator reads slow, pauses too long, and mispronounces Macaque for half the book before switching it up and getting it right.
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- Brandi Swingley
- 04-28-21
Thinly veiled anti-communist propaganda
I was incredibly excited by the science of this book, but once we arrived at discussing the contributions of the USSR, science went out the window for politics. We heard more about the poor quality of Soviet souvenirs than we did about their contributions to medical science, and what contributions WERE discussed were trivialized or framed as mad scientist insanity - even when it very closely mirrored what was being done in the US.
Moreover, the author's outright dismissal of the USA's history of experimentation on POC communities as Soviet propaganda beyond the days of slavery was disturbing and wildly inaccurate, while also someone trivializing experimentation on human beings as long as it was only on enslaved human beings.
I didn't just hate this book, I'm insulted by it. Shame on Brandy Schillace.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ken M. Shermer
- 03-24-22
Animal cruelty.....
Unless you like hearing about really awful experiments done on dogs, I'd steer clear. Really awful subject matter. I tapped out 90 minutes in.
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- sdee07
- 01-21-22
struggle to finish this book
when I first picked up the book I thought I was really excited to read it. however it has deemed itself to be extremely and graphically gory. not my cup of tea or my kind of book.
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