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

(Paperback)

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The history of medicine is a catastrophe, according to Druin Burch, with doctors having killed patients more often than cured them. This book is about how little and how much has changed and about our understanding of the medical drugs of modern Europe and America. 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.

Reviews

"A fascinating history of the development of clinical trials and the thinking behind them" Literary Review "For all the wizardry of modern medicine, with its bionic limbs and targeted drugs, doctors still cannot assume they have all the answers. This book offers a valuable inoculation against complacency" New Scientist "Taking The Medicine is both an assault on the myths of the infallible doctor and a history of pharmacology - the search for the one, true treatment... Burch makes a compelling case" Sunday Telegraph "Each chapter is a self-contained pleasure to read, like mini-fables on the perils of medicine" Sunday Times "Burch approaches his task with vigour and pace, exploring the therapeutic failures of doctors over the ages...there is much of interest as the story unfolds" Irish Times

Author Bio

Druin Burch works as a hospital doctor in Oxford, and is the author of Digging up the Dead, a biography of the Victorian surgeon Astley Paston Cooper.