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  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407021225
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

Taking the Medicine

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




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

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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Praise for Taking the Medicine

Taking The Medicine is both an assault on the myths of the infallible doctor and a history of pharmacology - the search for the one, true treatment... Burch makes a compelling case

Sunday Telegraph

A fascinating and irreverent history of medicine and those who've claimed to understand it, written by an NHS doctor with searing intelligence and a lively wit

Good Book Guide

A fascinating history of the development of clinical trials and the thinking behind them

Literary Review

Burch approaches his task with vigour and pace, exploring the therapeutic failures of doctors over the ages...there is much of interest as the story unfolds

Irish Times

Burch leads us through an array of shocking and surprising medical practices

Financial Times

Each chapter is a self-contained pleasure to read, like mini-fables on the perils of medicine

Sunday Times

For all the wizardry of modern medicine, with its bionic limbs and targeted drugs, doctors still cannot assume they have all the answers. This book offers a valuable inoculation against complacency

New Scientist

Intriguing and informed

Tom Whipple, The Times

This is a gripping history of the blundering progress of medicine

Christopher Hirst, Independent

Twenty-five essay-chapters examine 'cures' such as aspirin and thalidomide, all with a good bedside manner

Sunday Telegraph