Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
This is an astonishing, rather worrying and very enlightening history of medicine that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has ever received, or is likely to receive, treatment from a member of the medical profession, which I suspect would include the vast majority of us. Until I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 49 I had had very little contact with the medical profession, apart from as a consequence of the odd broken limb and childhood illness, so really hadn?t formed much of an opinion of them other than seeing them as highly qualified (and highly paid) individuals who must know what they are doing. It seems that, until very recently at least, I would have been very wrong in that assumption!
Throughout history, I have learned from this excellent book, the vast majority of medical interventions either did no good, or even worse actually caused harm ? despite the honesty and sincerity of the doctors involved. In fact, until a couple of hundred years ago there were only two drugs that were actually known to have an definite and measurable effect on human ailments ?opium and quinine. Many of our modern drugs originated in the colour dye factories of Germany in the late 19th century, bleeding patients as a cure persisted well into the 20th century, and even as recently as the early 1960s less than 10% of treatments given by doctors were actually known to provide benefit!
Druin builds up the picture of physicians throughout the ages relying on intuition backed up by self-belief in administering all manner of dreadful treatments to the unfortunate sick, without any true knowledge that their methods would do any good for the patient at all ? in fact, in most cases making things far worse. George Washington died because a succession of doctors ?bled? him until he had virtually no blood left!
There were some mavericks who, despite approbation and opposition, began to question this blind faith and began proposing and implementing tests of their treatments to try and determine if they were truly effective or actually harmful. Even then, many physicians would refuse to accept the evidence. It was only in the late 1970s and early 1980s that there finally emerged a new method, that of Evidence Based Medicine, based on randomised, double-blind clinical trials, that prescribed treatments became predictable in their outcomes. Nevertheless, there still exist many prejudices in the profession that incline many to refuse to accept that statistical evidence can usurp intuition and experience.
A thoroughly engaging and fascinating book that affects us all, and well worth reading!
Taking the Medicine - Druin Burch
Throughout history, I have learned from this excellent book, the vast majority of medical interventions either did no good, or even worse actually caused harm ? despite the honesty and sincerity of the doctors involved. In fact, until a couple of hundred years ago there were only two drugs that were actually known to have an definite and measurable effect on human ailments ?opium and quinine. Many of our modern drugs originated in the colour dye factories of Germany in the late 19th century, bleeding patients as a cure persisted well into the 20th century, and even as recently as the early 1960s less than 10% of treatments given by doctors were actually known to provide benefit!
Druin builds up the picture of physicians throughout the ages relying on intuition backed up by self-belief in administering all manner of dreadful treatments to the unfortunate sick, without any true knowledge that their methods would do any good for the patient at all ? in fact, in most cases making things far worse. George Washington died because a succession of doctors ?bled? him until he had virtually no blood left!
There were some mavericks who, despite approbation and opposition, began to question this blind faith and began proposing and implementing tests of their treatments to try and determine if they were truly effective or actually harmful. Even then, many physicians would refuse to accept the evidence. It was only in the late 1970s and early 1980s that there finally emerged a new method, that of Evidence Based Medicine, based on randomised, double-blind clinical trials, that prescribed treatments became predictable in their outcomes. Nevertheless, there still exist many prejudices in the profession that incline many to refuse to accept that statistical evidence can usurp intuition and experience.
A thoroughly engaging and fascinating book that affects us all, and well worth reading!
Taking the Medicine - Druin Burch