Robin Blake ist der Autor gefeierter Werke über die Künstler Van Dyke und Stubbs. Er hat für das Radio umfangreich geschrieben, produziert und präsentiert, ist als Kritiker weithin publiziert und ist Royal Literary Fund Fellow an der Brunel University. Er lebt in London.
County Coroner Titus Cragg has been called to the scene of a gruesome slaughter at a rural farmhouse. Meanwhile, his friend Dr Luke Fidelis is a guest at nearby Orford Hall, where a blackened body is discovered deep beneath the hot-house. Cragg and Fidelis are asked to investigate, and uncover a shocking connection between the two cases.
The discovery of a body in a pigsty, shot to death, leads Coroner Titus Cragg and Dr Luke Fidelis into a complex and baffling murder investigation.April, 1746 . When County Coroner Titus Cragg is called to examine a body found shot to death at a local farm, he finds himself drawn into a bizarre and complex case where nothing is as it first appears. As he questions those who knew the victim, it becomes clear that not everyone is telling him the whole truth.Could the motive for the murder lie in a dangerous contract the dead man had signed more than twenty years before, a so-called tontine agreement? Just what does the victim's enigmatic lawyer, Ambrose Parr, know that he's not revealing? As he and Dr Luke Fidelis attempt to track down the six other signatories to the contract, Titus realizes that if they do not find answers - and fast - more violent deaths will surely follow.
Can the mind and body affect each other? Can something non-material and subjective work physical change? Does the personality play an active, voluntary role against the body?Ever since medicine became a science, the role of the mind in physical health has been passionately disputed. Thoday. conventional treatments rely almost entirely on drugs, yet there is growing evidence to support what healers have always believed, that our bodies "know" how to become ill and well, and that we can choose one disease over another.In this fascinating book, Robin Blake examines the phrase " it's all in the mind" and reveals the full complexity of the mind's effect on the body, whether for good or ill. He challenges the mechanistic approach of modern medicine and hows that our emotions are deeply involved in the homeostatic processes that sustain life. Along the way, he explores the variablility of pain thresholds, the intelligence of the immune system, the selectiveness of infection, the cellular civil wars of cancer and auto-allergy, and may other phenomena which have baffled science.The body, he suggests, is far more than a biological machine, and doctors and patients alike would benefit from adopting a wider, more holistic view of health. (On reverse of book)