About the Authors

Helen and William Bynum have had a lifelong interest in plants and gardening and are making a two-acre garden in Suffolk. Helen Bynum studied at University College London and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine before lecturing in medical history at the University of Liverpool. She is now a freelance lecturer, editor and writer. She is the author of Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis (2012), co-editor with William Bynum of Dictionary of Medical Biography (2007) and Great Discoveries in Medicine (2011), and co-editor of the Biographies of Disease series.

William Bynum received his MD from Yale University and his PhD from the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, he is professor emeritus of the history of medicine at University College London. His numerous books include The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction (2008), A Little History of Science (2013) and, as editor, Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (1993; with Roy Porter) and The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005).