Gavin Francis > Quotes

“ancient custom of swearing by the testes (hence, ‘testify’).”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being

“Nowadays it is possible to say that lives are connected, by transplant, across the thresholds of life and death. Alec Finlay, Taigh – A Wilding Garden”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“We can taste what's in our mouths, touch what's within our reach, smell within hundreds of metres and hear within tens of miles. But it's only through our vision that we are in communication with the sun and stars.”
― Gavin Francis

“The huntsman couldn’t bear to kill Snow White, of course, so presented instead the organs of a pig. According to the original Grimms’ tale the Queen inspected them, was satisfied, then ate them “salted and cooked.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Abraham asks his servant to swear an oath by touching him in the hollow of the thigh – a reference to the ancient custom of swearing by the testes (hence, “testify”). From”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“He sees the beauty of a human face, and searches for the cause of that beauty, which must be more beautiful. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Montaigne”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“The five branches are immortalized in every medical student’s memory as Two Zombies Buggered My Cat (Temporal, Zygomatic, Buccal, Mandibular and Cervical). Remembering”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“People tend to think of brain surgeons as being very dextrous,” the neurosurgeon replied, “but it’s the plastic surgeons and microvascular surgeons who do that meticulous stuff.” He indicated the slide on the wall: a patient’s brain with an aerial array of steel rods, clamps and wires. “The rest of us just go gardening.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“far darker and more disquieting than the versions we’ve come to know, so is the original Sleeping Beauty, in which the girl is raped while in her coma, then gives birth without waking up. In”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (1658)”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being

“teenagers self-isolate from their parents and from their therapists because that’s the only way they can find the space to summon an authentic self from the disorder of their experience.”
― Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

“The word ‘essay’ comes from a root meaning ‘trial’ or ‘attempt’,”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being

“By their omissions, all maps leave room for the imagination, and for dreams.”
― Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

“IN THE 1930S a zealous French surgeon called Pierre Barbet became passionately fascinated by the details of crucifixion. To test whether the hand could support the body’s weight he experimented by nailing cadavers to a wooden cross. Making a guess at Jesus’s weight and the position of the arms with respect to the torso during Roman crucifixion, he calculated that the nails must have been hammered through the small bones of the wrist rather than the palm. Those wrist bones – the “carpus” – are held together very tightly by ligaments; Barbet found that if he nailed his corpses by the wrists rather than the palms, they didn’t tear out. Pierre Barbet published his experiments on the nailing of a human body in the 1930s, but in 1968, in a burial cave near Jerusalem, a skeleton was found of a young man who’d been crucified during the Roman period. A”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Hennick’s iliac artery and vein, as well as the artery and vein of the new kidney, were spliced together with neat embroidery stitches. Then the surgeon took a deep breath, stretched his arms like a stage conjurer, and said to me: “You’re about to witness the most wonderful sight in the history of medicine.” He removed the arterial and venous clamps in sequence, and Hennick’s blood began to pump into the withered kidney. Each beat of his heart, visible in the pumping of the arteries, caused the kidney to swell. It was like watching a process of reanimation: a refutation of death. As the kidney grew, its defeated, dimpled surface began to fill out to a lucent pink. The surgeon held up the ureter of the new kidney (the tube that carries urine to the bladder) and I watched as a bead of urine began to grow at its cut end.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Було б помилкою припускати, що лікарі - раціоналісти й що медичний погляд настільки неупереджений і відкритий для нових ідей, як того вимагають ідеали науки. Лікарі настільки ж схильні до стереотипного мислення й протекціонізму, як і представники інших професій, - просто в нас вищі стандарти, як і має бути.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“from the trunk the way a branch grows from a tree. It begins to bud at just four weeks’ gestation, and over three subsequent weeks divides into a rudimentary hand, forearm and upper arm, then rotates through ninety degrees. It’s the movement of those muscles as the arm grows and rotates, and the fixed origin of the nerves in the neck, which provide the warp and weave of the brachial plexus. Homer”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“tapered”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Вихор розділяє важке й легке, які повинні бути разом... З тієї ж причини сутулість спричиняє запаморочення - вона розділяє важке й легке. - Теофаст, "Про запаморочення”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“The happiness Rousseau felt on St Peter's isle was a consequence of the simplicity of his life there: he had few of his possessions, an abundance of leisure and the conversation of just a handful of others. He used an Italian phrase to describe this kind of happiness: there was a deep joy in far niente - 'doing nothing' - a joy that came more easily on an island that provided some distance from distraction.
"The island curtailed the possibilities of engaging with others, and the connections he felt were all the deeper and more satisfying as a result.
I know men will be careful not to give me back such a sweet refuge when they did not want to leave me there", Rousseau wrote of the island. "But at least they will not prevent me from transporting myself there each day on the wings of my imagination.”
― Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

“Він бачить красу людського обличчя й шукає причину цієї краси, яка має бути ще прекраснішою. - Ральф Волдо Емерсон, "Монтень”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Якщо зараз ви читаєте цю книгу при сонячному світлі, фотони, які потрапляють на вашу сітківку, народилися всього лише вісім із половиною хвилин тому внаслідок ядерного синтезу всередині Сонця. П'ять хвилин тому вони перетинали орбіту Меркурія, дві з половиною хвилини тому вони обігнали Венеру. Ті з них, які не перехопить Земля, пройдуть через орбіту Марса десь за чотири хвилини, а Сатурна - трохи більше ніж через годину. Після цієї подорожі в просторі, але поза часом (адже, як довів Ейнштейн, під час руху зі швидкістю світла час зупиняється), біле світло Сонця огортає все навколо нас і розділяється на різнокольорові частини.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“Як людина утворена з землі, води, повітря й вогню, так само влаштовано й тіло Землі; у людині є озеро крові... так і у тіла Землі є океан, який припливає та відпливає. - Леонардо да Вінчі”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“it's a beautiful idea: books as our seaways and railways, our trails and tracks, carrying us with them on a journey of recovery”
― Gavin Francis, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence

“Усі лікарі, зокрема й ви, постійно застосовують психотерапію, навіть якщо ви цього не усвідомлюєте й не маєте наміру цього роботи" (Фройд). В епілептичних нападах немає нічого священного, але, можливо, у стосунках лікаря та пацієнта є.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“The Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid believed that it was a mark of distinction to be able to hold two opposing points of view simultaneously.”
― Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

“... для зцілення потрібне не лише відновлення внутрішнього світу, а й взаємодія з довкіллям, яке дає нам можливість жити.”
― Gavin Francis, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum

“dealing with the links between poverty and ill health by trying to provide more money is no different, to me, from seeing a patient with pneumonia and prescribing antibiotics: in each station, i'm simply giving appropriate treatment. just as certain medicines are appropriate treatments for particular diseases, so more money, or holidays, or a better house, may also improve my patients health.”
― Gavin Francis, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence