Landscape of the Body

COCAINE COWBOYS tells the story of Ireland's love affair with cocaine since it first washed ashore on Cork's rugged coast to the billion-euro trade it has become.

In 1784, a small group of Irish surgeons broke ranks with the Guild of Barber-Surgeons to form the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). Ronan Kelly tells the story of RCSI through its contributions to a near-quarter-millennium of surgical, medical and societal change. From nineteenth-century bodysnatchers to the 1916 Rising, through two pandemics and two World Wars, with a vivid cast of characters, and reaching right to the present daythis history is a fast-moving narrative of a great Irish - and, now, global - institution.