Doctor of love: James Graham and his celestial bed [book review]
secondary literature · 2010
LINK
SUMMARY
Open-access PubMed Central record for Richard C Sha's 2010 book review in *Medical History* of Lydia Syson's biography of James Graham. The review identifies Graham as 'James Graham (1745-94)... a quack', records the Celestial Bed as costing fifty pounds the night and the bed's billing as 'medico, magnetico, musico, electrical', and supplies the bibliographic strip for the book (Lydia Syson, *Doctor of Love: James Graham and His Celestial Bed*, Richmond, Surrey: Alma Books, 2008, 331 pp., ISBN 978-1-84688-054-4). The review's opening sentence, 'It is no easy matter to situate a man who cared more for celebrity and marketing than science or medicine within the history of medicine,' is quoted in the case. PMC byline was verified by direct fetch (Perplexity initially misattributed the review).
NOTES
Open-access scholarly book review by Richard C Sha of Lydia Syson’s biography of James Graham, published in Medical History in January 2010 (volume 54, issue 1, pages 138-139; PMCID PMC2793165). The review is the principal scholarly handle on Syson’s biography in the open archival record and supplies both the bibliographic strip for the Syson book and the directly-quoted “medico, magnetico, musico, electrical” Celestial-Bed phrasing. Used as the secondary-literature anchor for the practitioner profile, the intervention’s mechanism description, and the disconfirmation framing.