Taking the Medicine by Druin Birch

Taking the Medicine sets out to demonstrate how ‘doctors, for most of human history, have killed their patients far more often than they have saved them’. That Druin Burch is an NHS doctor makes this prognosis all the more startling. Sharply written, Burch’s work is a witty but robust account of the painfully slow evolution of medicine, from Sumerian civilisation to the modern day. It is never, though, a dry history or scientific treatise; the narrative fizzes along, enhanced by anecdotal asides. In different parts of the book, one can learn of the First World War that five million soldiers died of infections, and British people stopped buying aspirins because of their German heritage. At the centre of medicine’s ill health, writes Burch, has been the ‘God complex’, first identified by Scottish doctor Archie Cochrane, a rare paragon of virtue in the book. Instilled with the power to bring about life or death, doctors have often acted upon an innate, unquestioning self-belief that their actions will inevitably help patients. Untried theories have been recklessly applied; doctors are human, with all the egotism and flaws therein. Gripping, unless you happen to be reading it in the queue for casualty. [Daniel Gray]