BMJ  2006;333:606 (16 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7568.606

reviews

Book

Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Irecently read George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma and experienced an unexpected sense of insult on behalf of my profession. In this celebrated play (see also Editor's choice, BMJ 2 September 2006 (doi: 10.1136/bmj.333.7566.0-f[Free Full Text])), Shaw serially indicts various kinds of late 19th century doctor—the hypocrite, the self publicist, and (most dangerous of all) the blinkered zealot. While I admired the plot construction, I suspected that Shaw had created such character extremes for comic effect. However, having read David Wootton's Bad Medicine, I am now no longer insulted and, on behalf of my profession, feel somewhat grateful to Shaw for his restraint. For, as Wootton painstakingly argues in this short but undoubtedly explosive new book, the history of medicine has been nothing less than a failure and doctors have been the culprits.

Vale of Leven Hospital, Alexandria imcclure@nhs.net

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