Has modern medicine run out of luck?

This week I have mostly been doing 11 contact hours of teaching plus prep for that, and a little reading of James Le Fanu’s interesting if a bit depressing book The Rise and Fall of Modern MedicineThe 11 contact hours included six on Friday in which rather ridiculously I introduced the beautiful symmetry of the cowpea mosaic virus to two entirely different audiences on the same day — one at 11:00 am and the other at 2:00 pm. I was doing my best at 2pm but it was a long week, so I had probably had a bit more enthusiasm in the morning.

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