‘Drama and humanity laced with humour both subtle and lurid’ Samer Nashef, author of The Naked Surgeon

The Greek physician Hippocrates thought the human body contained blood, phlegm and bile. In the right balance, these fluids produced health; if not, pain.

Liam Hughes is very familiar with bodily fluids. He spent nearly five decades on the NHS frontline, ultimately as a senior cardiologist. Extending the Hippocratic list to include sweat, tears, urine, solid waste and spunk (fortitude), he uses this framework to tell his own story of the highs and lows of hospital life. The terminal patient begging for a ‘Brompton cocktail’ to end his suffering; the loathsome on-call surgeon who impales himself on a shooting-stick; the selfless consultant who rams a police car to save a patient’s life: all shape Hughes’ strong sense of what the medical calling should and should not entail.

In a lively mixture of the lewd, the gross-out and the deeply humane, he conveys the pain, pleasure and pathos of hospital life. By turns moving, instructive, hilarious and outrageous, Bodily Fluids also expresses its author’s anxiety about the state of our health service – and offers a bold prescription for the way forward.

‘As an author of “doc lit”, Liam Hughes stands out. He masterfully weaves together elements of suspense, drama, humanity, all of it laced with a substantial load of humour, both subtle and lurid. What is most striking, however, is his unwavering dedication to his patients’

‘Within the first few pages we encounter a consultant lying on the hospital floor, emitting the eponymous fluids from both ends of his gastrointestinal tract; a new father who faints at the sight of his offspring emerging, cracks his head and dies; and a handy guide to bleeding. If this sounds like grim reading, it’s not, because Hughes narrates it all with wit and warmth, interspersing human stories with sober reflection on what the medical profession has become, and what’s wrong with the NHS today’

Liam Hughes got into Cambridge to take an arts degree but then, on a whim, decided he wanted to be a doctor. Despite not having a science A-level to his name, he chucked his coveted Oxbridge place for a stab at medical school. He then spent more than 40 years in the NHS, rising to become a senior cardiologist in East Anglia. Along the way he helped to raise more than £2 million to develop cardiac services, including by rowing the Atlantic in a world-record time. Now finally retired, he lives in France.