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Taking the Medicine
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407021225
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

Taking the Medicine

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

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sept 2010
Paperback
1 Mar 2010
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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.
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407021225
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

About the author

Druin Burch

Druin Burch, 34, studied Human Sciences at Oxford. After research in human and chimpanzee genetics, he studied medicine and has worked in hospitals across south east England. He teaches human evolution, physiology and ecology at Oxford, and writes for medical journals, the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. Burch is author of Digging up the Dead and Taking the Medicine.
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Also by Druin Burch

Digging Up the Dead
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