Scanty Particulars

In 1826, Dr James Barry performed the first recorded successful caesarean section. This was one of many achievements by the radical and outrageous surgeon, a man who earned international fame for medical innovations and infamy for battles with the establishment.

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This is a biography of the enigmatic Dr James Miranda Barry, who performed the first recorded successful caesarean section. Posted by the army as staff surgeon, Barry spent much of his career traversing the globe and eventually reaching the higest rank of Inspector General of Hospitals. But throughout his career, Barry courted controversy - through his flamboyant dress, his dalliances with society women and his strange and enduringly intimate friendship with Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of South Africa. The mystery surrounding Barry climaxed after his death, when the servant who laid out his body made a most surprising revelation. "Scanty Particulars" is the personal tale of an intensely public person whose life unfolds amidst constant drama, a world of medical innovation and colonial adventure.