The Alarming History of Medicine

The history of medicine is largely the substitution of ignorance by fallacies, argues Richard Gordon, author of "Doctor in the House", in this sceptical canter through the wastelands of medical history. Victorian physicians were brilliant at identifying all the diseases they had no idea how to cure. And when in 1826, in Paris, Laennec was confronted by a girl with such an enormous chest that he impulsively rolled up a handy piece of paper in order to listen from a seemly distance, he had unwittingly invented the stethoscope. The book visits, in their sickness, patients as difficult and diverse as Queen Victoria (who belched uncontrollably), Hitler (who had his rear passage inspected five times a day), and early safe-sex practitioner James Boswell (who wore condoms made out of ovine gut, secured by ribbons in regimental colours).