The Physic Garden

Moving, poetic and quietly provocative' ? The Independent. City life in the early nineteenth century was never short of drama: poverty and pollution preyed on all but the lucky few, and ?resurrection men' prowled the streets to procure corpses for anatomists to experiment on. Life is improving, however, for young William Lang, who begins courting Jenny, a fine needlewoman, and forms an unlikely friendship with botanist Dr Thomas Brown while working in the physic garden for a leading professor of surgery.