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A biography of Charles Waterton, the man who opened the first nature reserve in the grounds of his English home, housing 123 species of birds over 30 years. Fascinated by birds, his interest in nature took him to South America and Canada. He brought large quantities of curare, still used in modern medicine, into Europe in the belief that it might cure rabies, and he invented the Waterton method, a way of preserving animals without stuffing them.

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9780718829247

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Following his extensive wanderings throughout the Americas, Charles Waterton (1782-1865) introduced curare to European medicine and it soon became an essential for surgery. But his main claim to fame was as a writer - a satirist who wrote pamphlets attacking public figures, three volumes of Essays on Natural History, and a bestselling classic, Wanderings in South America, a book which has never been out of print since it was first published in 1825. This biography, based on considerable research, celebrates Waterton's English eccentricities as it details the amusing and fascinating details of his career. The book has a good bibliography and notes but a poor index. The writing is often clumsy and gets in the way, but Waterton's story is extraordinary. (Kirkus UK)

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B.W. Edginton has, he asserts, been variously and sometimes ignominiously a grammar-school truant, zoo keeper, trapper, stage hand, animal technician, guide-book writer and bird-observatory warden. He proudly professes to having no qualifications, but meekly confesses to being a member of Mensa. He used to live in a lighthouse but has now graduated to a council house. Much of his adult life has been spent in trying to escape from the Black Country. He first became interested in Charles Waterton in the late 1970s, whilst researching a short history of nature conservation and intellectual anti-nature, a very unpleasant exegesis of which he is now planning to write.

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