40th anniversary celebratory 2nd edition
ISBN: 9798870081256
Revised, with a new Preface reflecting on medicine’s changes during the past four decades, and a Foreword by Dr David Zigmond.
Cartoon-documentary paperback, available from Amazon, in UK and worldwide.
For information about review copies or adoptions, please contact: enquiries@IntegrativeHealthcare.co.uk
Should you see a doctor? Here is the critical diagnosis of establishment medicine, its ethics and power.
A fascinating history of the healing arts is documented from ancient times to the 20th century advance of scientific medicine. The facts of ‘medical progress’ are fever-charted, in a succinct and amusing way, which allows readers access to a matter of life and death. What we are shown, in the passage from earliest medical treatment to the ‘modern miracles’ of chemotherapy, is the assembling of a powerful medical establishment, with exclusive hegemony over questions of health on a mass, and now even a global, scale.
Two main currents of the medical mass industry are observed: the “free enterprise’ corporative system developed in the U.S. and its apparent social alternative in Britain, the National Health Service. Both are scrutinized for real achievements, paradoxes and faults. Criticisms of the giant systems, from the various alternative political, feminist, holistic and Third World standpoints are usefully summarized.
Medicine for Beginners was first published in 1984, before AIDS and COVID, DNA analysis and gene editing, yet its message is still vitally relevant. It is controversial, fun, and a first-rate illustrated guide to the historical roots of the ailments of modern medicine.