Medical Blunders

by Ian Schott

This is a collection of stories about medical blunders in the past and in modern life. The stories are of acts of arrogance, ignorance, cruelty and stupidity. They include tales a labotomy without anaesthetic, female mutilation, secret experiments on criminals, the insane and cancer patients, sex-changes, the doctors who become surgery addicts, wonder drugs with nightmare side-effects, the euthanasia experts, and chloroform orgasms.

Genres: Nonfiction, Medicine, Science, History

320 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Flaneurette · Rating 1 out of 5]

The range of medical blunders presented is almost impressive; the book sweeps throughout history and finds all sorts of examples of misconceptions and ill-chosen treatments. However, this book is shockingly shallow, the style and approach are very immature and it all reminds me of my own assignments as a 11-year old: "Look how much time I have spent reading the encyclopedia" - but without the flimsy introduction and conclusion I would write. In other words, there is a lot of mentioning and very little account.

The authors have indeed dug up a great amount of "blunders", yet, exploiting this label, they fail to give them direction and place in a broader picture. True "blunders" and headshakingly inappropriate practices are presented alongside what any historian would judge as quite sensible conclusions if one were to take the state of science and knowledge available at the time the "blunder" took place into account.

This book cannot even satisfy the hungriest of medicine critics; they would need a lot more substance and reasoning than this.

Conclusion: This book is a blunder.

[Keybo Taheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great medical history stories for the layman. Entertaining and well written. Kept me interested and mildly amused. Gave me an interest in medicine and offered unique insights into the blunders of medicine. To say we learn through our mistakes is an understatement in medicine. From labotomies to eugenics this book is worth a read but not to be taken too seriously..Glad i read it and would read another of the authors books on medicine.d

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was fairly interesting but could've used a bit more structure. It is definitely scary to see the history of doctors/medicine. It's interesting to think how life worked before the world was so well connected as now. You could get away with a lot more nonsense. Although it seems even now crazy beliefs are still strong so not sure if much has changed.