Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Bad Medicine : Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates - David Wootton
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Bad Medicine

Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates

By: David Wootton

Paperback | 22 November 2007

Sorry, we are not able to source the book you are looking for right now.

We did a search for other books with a similar title, however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

Just how much good has medicine done over the years? And how much damage does it continue to do?

The history of medicine begins with Hippocrates in the fifth century BC. Yet until the invention of antibiotics in the 1930s doctors, in general, did their patients more harm than good.

In this fascinating new look at the history of medicine, David Wootton argues that for more than 2300 years doctors have relied on their patients' misplaced faith in their ability to cure. Over and over again major discoveries which could save lives were met with professional resistance. And this is not just a phenomenon of the distant past. The first patient effectively treated with penicillin was in the 1880s; the second not until the 1940s. There was overwhelming evidence that smoking caused lung cancer in the 1950s; but it took thirty years for doctors to accept the claim that smoking was addictive. As Wootton graphically illustrates, throughout history and right up to the present, bad medical practice has often been deeply entrenched and stubbornly resistant to evidence.

This is a bold and challenging book--and the first general history of medicine to acknowledge the frequency with which doctors do harm.
Industry Reviews
`Wootton's history is lively and iconolastic' Sameer Rahim, Daily Telegraph

More in History

Looking from the North : Australian history from the top down - Henry Reynolds
The Shortest History of the United States of America - Don Watson
The Breath of the Gods : The History and Future of the Wind - Simon Winchester
100 Diaries That Chronicled World Events - Colin Salter

RRP $44.99

$35.75

21%
OFF
On My Watch : Leading NATO in a Time of War - Jens Stoltenberg

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Graveyards : A History of Living with the Dead - Roger Luckhurst

RRP $65.99

$49.75

25%
OFF
PIX : The Magazine that told Australia's Story - Margot Riley

RRP $59.99

$49.95

17%
OFF
Armada : The Spanish Enterprise and England's Deliverance in 1588 - Colin Martin
The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective - Sara Lodge
Code of Silence : How Australian Women Helped Win the War - Diana Thorp