Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates by David Wootton

I have been reading David Wooton's Bad Medicine in which he expouses the claim that until 1865 Doctors did nothing but harm to their patients.

Very interesting book, although he does overstate it, as Doctors were quite competent at dealing with mechanic problems and there were certainly some remedies which by experience did some good, but he is correct that the humoural theory particularly as combined with astrological ideas did mean that erroneous theory out-trumped experience - so his basic thesis is correct.


Oxbow Books - Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates by David Wootton

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