John Frawley, A Surgical Life: Dreaming Things That Never Were (CopyRight Publishing, 2011), 210 pages, $33 (ordered from the publisher, www.copyright.net.au, postage included). John Frawley’s book is an intensely personal story, from his first appointment on isolated Thursday Island to his innovative work as a distinguished vascular and transplant surgeon in Australia and Britain. The enormous advances in medicine are the backdrop to experiences and events that most of us can relate to: elation and satisfaction after success; soul-searching, disappointment and self-doubt at failure; ambition, jealousies and the frustrations of politics on every level. Frawley is self-deprecating, drily humorous, cynically…