Larval Therapy: Background information when reading The Swift and the Harrier

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The Swift and the Harrier

by Minette Walters

The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters X
The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters
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  • First Published:
    Jul 2022, 500 pages

    Paperback:
    Jul 2023, 522 pages

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Book Reviewed by:
Maria Katsulos
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About this Book

Larval Therapy

This article relates to The Swift and the Harrier

Maggots for larval therapy in plastic bag alongside measuring tube For a novel that focuses on a physician during an incredibly bloody war, The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters is generally not too explicit in describing the treatment of wounds. The passage below is an exception; when main character Jayne's brother suffers a pike wound to the thigh that soon becomes infected, her mentor suggests what we now call larval therapy: the introduction of maggots to gangrenous wounds. While certainly gross enough to disgust most modern readers — and seemingly very far removed from our own times — larval therapy, which has existed in some form or another since antiquity (and still does), is a fascinating phenomenon and indicative in the above passage of a change sweeping European medicine in the 16th and 17th centuries.

"The sack contained a glass bell jar with a writhing mass of maggots in its base. Richard told Jayne he began experimenting with the creatures after reading a report from a French surgeon in the previous century who ...

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