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Review
`intriguing and informed'
--The Times
'twenty-five essay-chapters examine `cures' such as aspirin and thalidomide, all with a good bedside manner' --Sunday Telegraph
'this is a gripping history of the blundering progress of medicine' -- Independent
--The Times
'twenty-five essay-chapters examine `cures' such as aspirin and thalidomide, all with a good bedside manner' --Sunday Telegraph
'this is a gripping history of the blundering progress of medicine' -- Independent
Review
`Druin Birch makes a compelling case.'
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked this up and started reading it by chance in a bookshop because it has a good cover (shallow, moi?). I had to buy it - this is a really good book, and strikes a great balance between entertainment and informing. It should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to get into medical school, and would give any aspiring doctor great fodder for interviews.
I don't really like medical history but this is a collection of the important and interesting bits of the history of medicine put into a very readable and entertaining format. Without understanding what medicine has gone through, it is impossible to understand where we are now, and the dangers we face from ourselves and others who try to make medicine move in various directions for their own good.
By far the best book about medicine I have read, in style and content, I have given several copies to friends, who have also enjoyed it. Great summer reading, as the stories come in very well written bite sized chunks.
I don't really like medical history but this is a collection of the important and interesting bits of the history of medicine put into a very readable and entertaining format. Without understanding what medicine has gone through, it is impossible to understand where we are now, and the dangers we face from ourselves and others who try to make medicine move in various directions for their own good.
By far the best book about medicine I have read, in style and content, I have given several copies to friends, who have also enjoyed it. Great summer reading, as the stories come in very well written bite sized chunks.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I was sent this book in advance of sharing a platform with Druin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. This was fortunate, because I might have missed it otherwise. It is a riveting history of medicine, focusing on how the doctors have gradually learned to recognize which treatments are effective and which are not. He shows that many of the remedies used by the medical profession in the past caused more harm than good, and that this can even happen today in the absence of good data from randomized controlled trials. Perhaps his most important message is that raw clinical intuition is absolutely useless as a guide to treatment effectiveness, a message that some doctors still find difficult to swallow (as I recently discovered from intemperate defenders of ECT when I tried to publish a review showing that there is almost no evidence that this treatment is useful). For this reason, I would recommend it to all medical students and indeed anyone interested in modern health care.
The style is light and accessible. There are lots of nice anecdotes and some good potted biography (particularly of Archie Cochrane, a man whose impact on modern medicine has been enormous but who is hardly known outside medical circles). A great read.
The style is light and accessible. There are lots of nice anecdotes and some good potted biography (particularly of Archie Cochrane, a man whose impact on modern medicine has been enormous but who is hardly known outside medical circles). A great read.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an extremely well written history of medicine that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has ever received, or is likely to receive, treatment from a member of the medical profession, which I suspect would include the vast majority of us. Until I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 49 I had had very little contact with the medical profession, apart from as a consequence of the odd broken limb and childhood illness, so really hadn't formed much of an opinion of them other than seeing them as highly qualified (and highly paid) individuals who must know what they are doing. It seems that, until very recently at least, I would have been very wrong in that assumption!
Throughout history, I have learned from this excellent book, the vast majority of medical interventions either did no good, or even worse actually caused harm - despite the honesty and sincerity of the doctors involved. In fact, until a couple of hundred years ago there were only two drugs that were actually known to have an definite and measurable effect on human ailments -opium and quinine. Many of our modern drugs originated in the colour dye factories of Germany in the late 19th century, bleeding patients as a cure persisted well into the 20th century, and even as recently as the early 1960s less than 10% of treatments given by doctors were actually known to provide benefit!
Druin builds up the picture of physicians throughout the ages relying on intuition backed up by self-belief in administering all manner of dreadful treatments to the unfortunate sick, without any true knowledge that their methods would do any good for the patient at all - in fact, in most cases making things far worse. George Washington died because a succession of doctors `bled' him until he had virtually no blood left!
There were some mavericks who, despite approbation and opposition, began to question this blind faith and began proposing and implementing tests of their treatments to try and determine if they were truly effective or actually harmful. Even then, many physicians would refuse to accept the evidence. It was only in the late 1970s and early 1980s that there finally emerged a new method, that of Evidence Based Medicine, based on randomised, double-blind clinical trials, that prescribed treatments became predictable in their outcomes. Nevertheless, there still exist many prejudices in the profession that incline many to refuse to accept that statistical evidence can usurp intuition and experience.
A thoroughly engaging and fascinating book on a topic that affects us all, and well worth reading!
Throughout history, I have learned from this excellent book, the vast majority of medical interventions either did no good, or even worse actually caused harm - despite the honesty and sincerity of the doctors involved. In fact, until a couple of hundred years ago there were only two drugs that were actually known to have an definite and measurable effect on human ailments -opium and quinine. Many of our modern drugs originated in the colour dye factories of Germany in the late 19th century, bleeding patients as a cure persisted well into the 20th century, and even as recently as the early 1960s less than 10% of treatments given by doctors were actually known to provide benefit!
Druin builds up the picture of physicians throughout the ages relying on intuition backed up by self-belief in administering all manner of dreadful treatments to the unfortunate sick, without any true knowledge that their methods would do any good for the patient at all - in fact, in most cases making things far worse. George Washington died because a succession of doctors `bled' him until he had virtually no blood left!
There were some mavericks who, despite approbation and opposition, began to question this blind faith and began proposing and implementing tests of their treatments to try and determine if they were truly effective or actually harmful. Even then, many physicians would refuse to accept the evidence. It was only in the late 1970s and early 1980s that there finally emerged a new method, that of Evidence Based Medicine, based on randomised, double-blind clinical trials, that prescribed treatments became predictable in their outcomes. Nevertheless, there still exist many prejudices in the profession that incline many to refuse to accept that statistical evidence can usurp intuition and experience.
A thoroughly engaging and fascinating book on a topic that affects us all, and well worth reading!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great read with minor weaknesses
I really enjoyed this book. Full of interesting anecdotes strung together in a loose but engaging narrative. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Dr Brian D Smith
A very enjoyable history of medicine.
I really enjoyed reading this book. A history of medicine and an explanation of how the double-blind randomised controlled trial helped to create scientific evidence-based... Read more
Published 10 months ago by goingpostal
For all patients
This was a riveting read - I was sorry to finish it. I takes you through all the mistakes and wanderings medicine has gone through before arriving at today with emphasis on the... Read more
Published on 31 Mar 2009 by Ruth Manfox
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