Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and our Difficulty Swallowing It

Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and our Difficulty Swallowing It
ISBN-10
1407021222
ISBN-13
9781407021225
Category
Family & Relationships
Pages
336
Language
English
Published
2009-01-15
Publisher
Random House
Author
Druin Burch

Description

Doctors and patients alike trust the medical profession and its therapeutic powers; yet this trust has often been misplaced. Whether prescribing opium or thalidomide, aspirin or antidepressants, doctors have persistently failed to test their favourite ideas - often with catastrophic results. From revolutionary America to Nazi Germany and modern big-pharmaceuticals, this is the unexpected story of just how bad medicine has been, and of its remarkably recent effort to improve. It is the history of well-meaning doctors misled by intuition, of the startling human cost of their mistakes and of the exceptional individuals who have helped make things better. Alarming and optimistic, Taking the Medicine is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why to trust the pills they swallow.

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