Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

A Taste for Poison by Neil Bradbury

17 reviews

horizonous's review against another edition

challenging informative medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Medical content

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Death, Mental illness, Vomit, Medical trauma, Abortion, and Murder

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Infidelity, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, and War

avidreaderandgeekgirl's review against another edition

adventurous dark informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

 3 stars- The book was interesting, but because of the way it was set up, especially in audiobook format let your attention wander at the beginning of the chapter when he was talking about the history of the poison, and only begin to pay attention at the true crime and "how it kills" parts at the end of each chapter. Which means you'd miss things. It was also a bit overall technical. But it was informative. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Murder

ambermarshall's review against another edition

dark informative medium-paced

5.0

Absolutely fascinating stuff. Talks not only about true crime instances of poisoning for each chemical mentioned, but also how it specifically works and taught me a lot about human biology that I either forgot or never learned. Happily it's not a how-to manual: the events recounted include how the murderers were found out (more than you'd think were recent and outed by their Internet search history). Accessibly and compellingly written.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Murder

albernikolauras's review against another edition

dark informative medium-paced

4.5

This is a nonfiction book describing 11 different compounds that are commonly used for poisonings, how the compounds worked, and some cases where people were poisoned with them - and it was amazing. While there was nothing fancy about his writing, I felt he did an excellent job bringing the science to life.

Bradbury does an excellent job explaining how each chemical works, what part of the body it attacks, and why it brings on the symptoms it does. He discusses the difference a dosage can make between being a treatment and death. The focus of the book is primarily that, but he uses true crime cases of poisonings to bring the details to life. All of this was written so clearly and neatly, and it was just an enjoyable experience to read. I really enjoyed his summary in a 'Garden of Death' at the end of how no chemical is evil and how they just can be used for evil.

That being said, it does give me an uneasy feeling about getting long term treatment at a hospital. Some of the poisoning cases were absolutely abhorrant, and - due to the access doctors and nurses have to some of these chemicals - a lot of medical personnel were featured in the true crime element of this.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Blood, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

In the case of child abuse/death -

There was a nurse who worked in a children's hospital and injected her patients with potassium while people were not looking. Some of the children died. It isn't graphically depicted, but if this might bother you, please take care.

idun_aurora's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

5.0

I listened the audiobook through in one sitting while crocheting socks, feeling much like Miss Marple. Well-written and thoroughly researched!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Death, Drug use, Suicide, Terminal illness, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, and Murder

librarymouse's review against another edition

challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.0

A Taste for poison is information -dense and conversational in style. I really enjoyed the anecdotal examples given for the different poisons' historical uses both in medicine and with malicious intent. I didn't know that the Curies' daughter was a victim of their radiation experiments. Some of the more recent examples of misuse of these poisons were unexpectedly upsetting because the incidents were geographically near to where I live and happened in a time in which I was alive. I enjoyed the conversational tone of the book, but I don't feel like I retained as much as I wanted to with a single read through. The organization of the contents is better suited to a few further readings if this were something I wanted to use as a source in future research.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Death, Suicide, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Murder

clarabooksit's review against another edition

funny informative medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Murder

Moderate: Suicide attempt