Derek Berrey

“What makes Halsted’s achievements all the more remarkable is that for much of his career he was a drug addict. While investigating methods for providing pain”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“Two of the victims died. Mary fled but was recaptured and spent the remaining twenty-three years of her life under house arrest on North Brother Island in the East River until her death in 1938. She was personally responsible for at least fifty-three cases of typhoid and three confirmed deaths, but possibly many more. The particular tragedy of it is that she could have spared her unfortunate victims if she had just washed her hands before handling food.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“I prefer to use stories and vignettes to illustrate our gullibility about stories and our preference for the dangerous compression of narratives.*”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“The idea was to help women produce babies of genius by giving them the very best sperm modern science could provide. Some two hundred children were born as a result of the bank’s efforts, though none, it seems, proved to be an outstanding genius or even an accomplished eyeglass engineer.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants