Dr Marc Barton

My interest in medicine began earlier than most. As a child, I was admitted to hospital with an acute asthma attack. I remember being awed by the doctors and nurses looking after me and by how quickly their treatment transformed a frightening situation. It was during that experience that I decided I wanted to become a doctor.

I went on to study medicine at Imperial College London, qualifying in 2001. I worked as a doctor for almost fourteen years, principally in emergency medicine and intensive care, before eventually leaving clinical medicine to become a full-time Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor.

Alongside medicine, history has fascinated me since my teenage years. Past Medical History grew from the point where those two interests meet: an opportunity to explore the people, discoveries, mistakes and ideas that gradually shaped modern medicine.

I particularly enjoy the stories behind developments that can now seem routine or inevitable. Medicine rarely advances in a straight line, and many of the practices we take for granted emerged through extraordinary individuals, chance observations, failed experiments, fierce disagreements and, occasionally, remarkable acts of courage.

Writing these essays gives me an excuse to keep exploring those stories and, I hope, to make them interesting and accessible to other people too.