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

Title: Medical Blunders: Amazing True Stories of Mad, Bad, and Dangerous Doctors
Author: Robert Youngson
ISBN: 9780814796788
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 1996
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 416
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description:

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.