The Surgeon's Secret: Dr. James Barry

He saved a mother and child on a kitchen table by candlelight. He fought cholera with clean water and open windows. And he kept one secret for fifty years.

Tonight, drift off to the story of Dr. James Barry, born Margaret Ann Bulkley in Cork around 1789, who sailed to Edinburgh in 1809 under a new name, qualified as a doctor in 1812, and joined the British Army in 1813. In Cape Town he reformed the prison, the asylum, and the leper settlement, and in 1826 performed the first caesarean in the British Empire where both mother and baby lived. He served in Mauritius, Jamaica, St Helena, Malta, Corfu, and Canada, rose to Inspector General of Hospitals, and scolded Florence Nightingale for standing in the sun without a hat. When he died in 1865, his wish not to be examined was ignored, and the whole empire learned what he had never told anyone. The army sealed his records for a century. His headstone says what he wanted it to say.

You'll walk the tidal quays of Cork, sit in a chalk-and-lamp-oil lecture hall, watch cloud pour over Table Mountain, stand beside a candlelit kitchen table, ride a sleigh over the frozen St. Lawrence, and rest at a quiet stone in long grass.

Told twice: once at a natural pace, then slowly, with long pauses, to guide you into sleep.

Support the show: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support. And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.