Artigo Revisado por pares

Great Medical Disasters

1984; American Medical Association; Volume: 252; Issue: 18 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1001/jama.1984.03350180079040

ISSN

1538-3598

Autores

Roy C. Baron,

Tópico(s)

Health and Conflict Studies

Resumo

This is an entertaining, although sometimes shocking collection of anecdotes by a physician who has gained a reputation for looking at the lighter side of medicine. With humor and a sense of irony, Great Medical Disasters presents an array of calamitous misadventures that have befallen physicians, their patients, and the general public during the last several centuries. Gordon's examples of professional malpractice and buffoonery, deadly epidemics, bureaucratic blundering, and the misfortunes of some well-known patients, all but convince the reader to concentrate on prevention and never mind the cure. Included in these stories are such persons as the surgeon Robert Liston, who once performed an operation that resulted in a 300% mortality; James Boswell, whose sexual appetite led to an unsavory demise at the hands of the "clap"; (Typhoid) Mary Mallon, the itinerant housecook who did for Salmonella typhosa what Johnny Appleseed did for the Macintosh; and the enterprising scoundrels

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