Showing results by author "Dr Matt Morgan" in All Categories

Following in the wake of hugely successful medical memoirs such as Do No Harm and Fragile Lives, Critical is an intelligent, compelling and profoundly insightful journey into the world of intensive care medicine and the lives of people who have forever been changed by it.

It all started with a Hob Nob. As Dr Matt Morgan, an intensive care consultant, examined a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest after inhaling some biscuit crumbs, he saw a flock of birds fly past the window. They must inhale objects all the time when flying, how do they survive? he thought to himself. This began an investigation that spanned continents, species and millennia. For animal science has so much to teach us about human medicine. While some of the overlaps and parallels are obvious, there is so much more that we have learnt from the animal world.

It happened in an instant. Ed was walking through a park with his friend Stuart when there was a bang, a bright light and then nothing. Ed and Stuart had been hit by a bolt of lightning – 300 million volts, enough to power a city for a day, coursed through their bodies, short-circuiting their hearts. Ed was found first, given life-saving CPR to start his heart again, and he survived and had a second chance. He lives life a little differently now, every day knowing the thin margins that separate life and death.