The rise and fall of modern medicine - James Le Fanu

The achievements of medicine in the postwar period rank as one of the most sustained epochs of human endeavour since the Renaissance. So dramatic and profound has been the assault on disease that it is now almost impossible to imagine the world of just fifty years ago when there were no drugs for most killer diseases. These achievements have had a profoundly beneficial affect on people's lives as well as being a liberating force, freeing them from the fear of illness or untimely death, permitting them for the first time in human history to live out their natural lifespans, whilst significantly ameliorating the chronic disabilities associated with ageing. The scope of medicine is immeasurably greater than it was fifty years ago, but the optimism generated by those achievements seems to have evaporated. Medicine is doing better but feeling worse.THE RISE AND FALL OF MODERN MEDICINE presents for the first time a comprehensive and searching reappraisal of the science, philosophy and politics of modern medicine.