Roy Porter’s brilliant new book immediately becomes upon publication the standard work on the history of medicine. It is also, characteristically, a joy to read.

Medicine advances ever faster, and with it not just a capacity to overcome sickness, but to transform the very nature of life. Starting in ancient Antiquity, Roy Porter’s magnum opus charts how this health revolution came about and how life for human beings in the West has ceased, in Hobbes’ memorable phrase, to be ‘nasty, brutish and short’.

Porter plots the growth of medical specialisms – pharmacology, physiology, anatomy, neurology, bacteriology – and the institutions of medicine – the hospital and asylum – to show how medical advances have often created as many problems as they have solved.

The book is also a treasure trove of historical surprises: Porter shows how the ancient Egyptians treated incipient baldness with a mixture of hippopotamus, lion, crocodile, goose, snake and ibex fat; how a mystery epidemic devastated ancient Athens and brought to an end the domination of that great city; and how lemons did as much as Nelson to defeat Napoleon.