Description
The Disease of Civilization: An Indictment of Traditional Methods of Medical Treatment and a Plea for a Completely New ApproachDuring the 1970s there were many signs of growing disillusionment with orthodox medicine. Barbed attacks on the profession, from Illich's Medical Nemesis to Barbara Gordon's I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can, became best sellers, while the practitioners of alternative therapies began to enjoy an unprecedented boom.
Why? Brian Inglis, who has written histories of both orthodox and unorthodox medicine, decided to examine the evidence about the cause and course of disease, from the killers, heart attacks and cancer, to the nuisances, such as the common cold, to try to find what has gone wrong; why medical science has failed to live up to the high expectations generated by its apparent triumphs in the wonder drug era of the 1940s and 1950s. His findings show that the criticisms have been justified; the profession, secure in power and prestige, has not moved with the times.
Inglis has probed even deeper, to examine the reasons. Not merely is the profession a self-perpetuating oligarchy, which makes change difficult, but it is itself composed of a proliferation of specialties. These dominate medical education and research, distorting both to serve their own ends. to consolidate and expand their empires.
ISBN: 0340217170
