Bodily Fluids: Five decades of blood, phlegm and bile on the hospital frontline

Drama and humanity laced with humour both subtle and lurid Samer Nashef, author of The Naked Surgeon

The Greek physician Hippocrates thought the human body contained blood, phlegm and bile. In the right balance, these fluids produced health; if not, pain.

Liam Hughes is very familiar with bodily fluids. He spent nearly five decades on the NHS frontline, ultimately as a senior cardiologist. Extending the Hippocratic list to include sweat, tears, urine, solid waste and spunk (fortitude), he uses this framework to tell his own story of the highs and lows of hospital life. The terminal patient begging for a Brompton cocktail to end his suffering; the loathsome on-call surgeon who impales himself on a shooting-stick; the selfless consultant who rams a police car to save a patients life: all shape Hughes strong sense of what the medical calling should and should not entail.

In a lively mixture of the lewd, the gross-out and the deeply humane, he conveys the pain, pleasure and pathos of hospital life. By turns moving, instructive, hilarious and outrageous, Bodily Fluids also expresses its authors anxiety about the state of our health service and offers a bold prescription for the way forward.