How long does it take to read Blood and Guts?
a short history of medicine
Blood and Guts by Roy Porter takes about 4 hours 6 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 6 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2002. 224 pages, about 61,600 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 51 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 6 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 34 minutes |
The page count is the median across 10 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both frightening and elating. Startlingly illustrated, A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDICINE is the ideal present for anyone who is keenly aware of their own mortality and wants to do something about it. It is also a wonderful memorial to one of Penguin's greatest historians.
Subjects: Medicine, History, Medicine, history, History of Medicine, Science, Medical
