EVERY DAY, OUR NEWSPAPERS bring news of staggering medical breakthroughs which promise treatments for this, cures for that, and, occasionally, help with the other.
Readers are first terrified with the news that eating X will give them cancer – then reassured that drinking Y will prevent it.
The following day, it turns out that Y is the carcinogen, and X the cure.
Little wonder many of us spend our lives bamboozled, or turn off altogether.
Luckily, the world-famous doctor-writer Theodore Dalrymple has read the original scientific papers in the medical journals on which the newspaper scare stories are based.
The results – published in this ‘dip into’ collection of short and highly readable essays, full of Dalrymple’s classic dry wit and beautiful phrasing – may or may not reassure you, depending on where you started out.
Readers are first terrified with the news that eating X will give them cancer – then reassured that drinking Y will prevent it.
The following day, it turns out that Y is the carcinogen, and X the cure.
Little wonder many of us spend our lives bamboozled, or turn off altogether.
Luckily, the world-famous doctor-writer Theodore Dalrymple has read the original scientific papers in the medical journals on which the newspaper scare stories are based.
The results – published in this ‘dip into’ collection of short and highly readable essays, full of Dalrymple’s classic dry wit and beautiful phrasing – may or may not reassure you, depending on where you started out.
