Reviews

Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul by Brandy Schillace

dear6hla's review

challenging dark informative medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death

coriandercake's review

4.0

I love it when actual experts write popular books in their subject. This was a very informative and interesting read.

katekoda's review

5.0

Fun, fascinating, thought provoking.

apersonfromflorida's review

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Medical content, and Animal death

Moderate: Car accident, Body horror, and Death

Minor: Ableism, Cancer, and Child death

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Gore, Animal death, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Injury/Injury detail, War, and Car accident

Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Xenophobia, Classism, Antisemitism, Gun violence, Ableism, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Child death, Cancer, Murder, and Self harm

georgey1809's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

bisexual's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

mementomortis's review

4.0

you’re telling me there are TWO human head transplant obsessed doctors??

really informative and rides the line between being a. straight up biography with also being about the general advancements of medicine at the time

also homeboy literally avoided being cancelled lol

amess's review

dark informative medium-paced

4.75

Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher is a historical and biographical tale of the quest to transplant the human mind/soul, which was pursued by Dr. Robert White.

Schillace does a wonderful job remaining objective and unbiased on Dr. White's work as well as the ethics surrounding it while also highlighting the controversies of his work- such as the PETA-led animal rights abuse accusations geared toward his experiments on rhesus monkeys. Whether the work would have been stronger had Schillace lobbied any criticisms of his work (which did end up having practical uses in the surgery field, but his end goal remained unfulfilled) remains to be seen.

I do think Schillace sometimes focused too much on White as a person as well as his family in clear attempts to humanize him when his family seemed to be separate from his career.

However, this was a fascinating look into medical science as well as deeper questions such as what is considered death and to what extent medicine should intervene in that process.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and Animal cruelty

Graphic descriptions and pictures of animal experimentation

dons_books's review

5.0

The story is fascinating, engagingly written, and, at times, truly disturbing (in the best way). The connection to NE Ohio was completely unknown to this reader. Well done! A must read for anyone from Greater Cleveland or just Ohio.