After medical school in London and a PhD in history I taught the history of science and medicine at Cambridge, Oxford, and UCL.

I was one of the judges for the inaugural Wellcome Trust Book Prize in 2009, and chair of judges for the 2018 McCarthy Award for History of Medicine Research, given by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 2016 I received the Faculty Medal of the Society of Apothecaries for my work on the history of medicine, and since 2015 I’ve been in Who’s Who. I’m a long-standing member of the Society of Authors, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Charter Patron of the wonderful Coram, which has been supporting London’s children since 1739.

Writing in the Guardian, Will Self called my The Sick Rose ‘superbly erudite and lucid’.

My first book, Medical London, was a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 in 2008. My cultural history of gin has been a slow-burn success – Nicholas Lezard made the paperback edition his Guardian choice, at least one major UK gin company gives a copy to all new employees, and overseas readers can enjoy a gorgeous US edition. Crucial Interventions, the follow-up to The Sick Rose, came out in 2015, and The Smile Stealers in 2017.

I’ve appeared on TV, radio, and podcasts around the world.

In 2011 I received one of the first Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowships for my work on public engagement in the history of medicine. I was Scholar in Residence at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn in 2013. In 2015-17 I was a member of the Wellcome Trust-funded Corpse Project, exploring ways of laying the dead to rest that help the living and the Earth. In 2018 I was curatorial consultant to ‘Teeth’, a Wellcome Collection exhibition inspired by The Smile Stealers. 

My essays and reviews have appeared in many places, from the London Review of Books to the Lancet and Strange Attractor.

From 2008 to 2019 I wrote reviews, essays, and ‘Case Histories’, a monthly column on the history of disease, for the Lancet. I’m an honorary Phi Delta Epsilon, an honorary Fellow of the Medical Society of London, and an honorary founder member of the Morbid Anatomy Museum (now, sadly, defunct).

Wherever We Are When We Come To The End, my second poetry book, is out now with Valley Press.

Seahouses, my first collection, came out in 2015. The title sequence received the 2006 Promis Prize for poetry, and the collection was shortlisted in the 2013 Poetry Business competition, judged by Simon Armitage. I also founded and ran the highly successful ‘Blood Lines’ poetry group at Wellcome Collection.

I’ve worked on many strange and wonderful projects …

… most recently as a historical consultant for the Pouchard parfumerie in Paris, on a forthcoming range of scents inspired by the history of alchemy.