Taking the Medicine (eBook)

A Short History of Medicine s Beautiful Idea, and our Difficulty Swallowing It

Druin Burch (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2009 | 1. Auflage
336 Seiten
Random House (Verlag)
978-1-4070-2122-5 (ISBN)

Infos

For years patients have placed their trust in doctors and the drugs they prescribe. Yet as Druin Burch's thought-provoking history of medicine demonstrates our trust has often been misplaced. Only with the development of antibiotics after the Second World War did doctors begin to cure more than they killed but even in this supposedly advanced age patients feel victim to tragedies such as the Thalidomide scandal. Burch argues that the real heroes of medicine are the men and women who demonstrated the vital importance of controlled testing over the 'intuition' of doctors and encourages us to ask more questions about the new breed of wonder drugs, to question our own doctors and to press governments against handing control of our medicines, and our lives, to global drug companies. His book is both alarming and optimistic, and is essential reading.

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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.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.1.2009
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Familie / Erziehung
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
• ISBN-10: 1-4070-2122-2 / 1407021222
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4070-2122-5 / 9781407021225