Professor Guy Leschziner writes that he was raised in a secular household that was ‘entirely irreligious’ yet with ‘a strong sense of morality, of right and wrong’. As an eminent neurologist and a rational atheist, it’s striking that his study of the extremes of human behaviour should reach for such Biblical terms. Is there an element of ghoulishness here? Seven Deadly Sins has a structure of which David Fincher, director of the gruesome film Seven, might approve.
To zero in on the sins is undoubtedly a darkly entertaining approach, if not for the squeamish. Having been a consultant at Guy’s hospital for more than 25 years, Leschziner has seen ‘the full spectrum of human morality’: inexplicable altruism, generosity, kindness, love. The woman who donates a kidney to a complete stranger; the kind Samaritan diving into the murky waters of the Thames to save a drowning man. On the other hand, this is work that if you were to take it home with you on a daily basis would be the stuff of nightmares:
Unspeakable cruelty, sloth and gluttony. Patients eating themselves to death, or those people brought into the emergency department beaten to oblivion, the victims of anger, envy, pride, lust.
But far from blocking the memories, Leschziner wants to think in detail about all of this. The result is an elegantly argued book that does far more than just lift the curtain on what occurs between a neurologist and his patients. Through devastating modern case studies, or first-hand accounts of individuals Leschziner has worked with, each ‘sin’ is explored. And as he argues in defence of that archaic label, we tend to bring our own sense of horror: ‘At the heart of these behaviours that we term sins is the concept that by our actions we are judged.
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