Medical Blunders: Amazing True Stories of Mad, Bad, and Dangerous Doctors

By Robert M. Youngson

Book Overview

A doctor removes the normal, healthy side of a patient's brain instead of the malignant tumor. A man whose leg is scheduled for amputation wakes up to find his healthy leg removed. These recent examples are part of a history of medical disasters and embarrassments as old as the profession itself. In Medical Blunders, Robert M. Youngson and Ian Schott have written the definitive account of medical mishap in modern and not-so- modern times.
Youngson and Schott cover the gamut of medical accidents, from famous quacks to curious forms of sexual healing, from blunders with the brain to drugs worse than the diseases they are intended to treat. In Medical Blunders, we find shamefully dangerous doctors, human guinea pigs, masturbation treated as a disease requiring treatment, and the legendary surgeon who was himself a craven morphine addict. The resulting picture is one which depicts medical mistakes that are incredible, misguided, arrogant, cruel, or stupendously wrong-headed.
Exploring the line between the comical and the tragic, the honest mistake and the intentional crime, Medical Blunders illustrates once and for all that doctors are subject to the same political, social, historical, and personal pressures as the rest of humanity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814796788
• ISBN13: 9780814796788
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.7" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Doctor, Doctor, I Feel Like I Should Run Away

I picked this book up as a birthday present not long after we had a bit of an incident in a local hospital, involving a 17cm pair of scissors being left inside some poor woman after surgery. Bet there's a scrub nurse going around saying "Scissors... Scissors..." somewhere!Youngson and Schott have put together a very interesting and, let's face it, pretty damning picture of the medical profession, in ancient, mediaeval and recent times. It starts with a review of the high-technology wizardry that has been flogged off over the years, and moves through a variety of strange and often sickening stories. Some of these stories - like the concept of 'Blue Light Healing" - are just plain weird and quite funny, whilst others - like the stories of lobotomy and the thalidomide tragedy - are quite depressing.I'm a medical student. Whilst reading this didn't exactly put me off my course, it certainly gives pause for thought. Not a light read, but very, very interesting.