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| Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine's Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It |  | Author: Druin Burch
Publisher: Random House UK
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Seller: supermoviedeals
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 893,865
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Pages: 330
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 1845951506
Dewey Decimal Number: 615.109
EAN: 9781845951504
ASIN: 1845951506
Publication Date: July 9, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Over the last 2,000 years doctors have killed patients far more often than they saved them, and patients have colluded because they trusted them—this book is about how little and how much has changed For years patients have placed their trust in doctors and the drugs they prescribe; yet as this thought-provoking history of medicine demonstrates, this trust has often been misplaced. Whether prescribing opium or thalidomide, aspirin or antidepressants, doctors have consistently failed to test their favorite ideas—often with catastrophic results. Only with the development of antibiotics after World War II did doctors begin to cure more than they killed. Arguing that the real heroes of medicine are the men and women who demonstrated the vital importance of controlled testing over the "intuition" of doctors, this book questions the new breed of wonder drugs and the control of people's medicines—and their lives—by global drug companies. Both alarming and optimistic, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why to trust the pills they swallow.
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| Customer Reviews:
A book for everyone involved with health care June 17, 2010
Carl Bartecchi
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Taking the Medicine is an outstanding book which should be read by everyone involved with health care. Physicians and especially those in training to be physicians need to read this book. Many of the mistakes that have been made in medicine, from the earliest days and even until today could have been avoided if we were only able to learn from the mistakes of others that have gone before us. Burch nicely reviews a critical sampling of those mistakes. He discusses the history of the development of the all important randomised, controlled, clinical trials that have helped medicine to advance to it's present state of effectiveness, though still not without problems. Left unsaid is the alternative medicine establishment that appears threatened by such trials, favoring personal experiences and patient commentaries, both of which prove to be unreliable and destined to lead one astray. For the medical as well as the lay reader, Burch provides a wonderful history of therapies and how they came to be developed. Obviously well researched, this book provides many new and fascinating takes on medicines and how they came to be accepted by the medical community and utilized, though not always appropriately. New and often not so complementary insights into those who were once considered medical heroes are provided with discussions of how and where they went wrong.
Burch writes well and has proven capable of holding one's attention throughout the text.I will strongly recommend this book to the medical students that I teach.
Carl E. Bartecchi, M.D.
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