My first thought is that if you were
suspicious of doctors, How to Remove a Brain: and other bizarre medical practices and procedures by David Haviland will drive you screaming away from them! This is a wonderful book devoted to dragging
up every weird and wacky idea in medical science from times ancient to present.
Well written with a pen dipped in sarcasm,
you’ll find yourself laughing and groaning.
I thoroughly enjoyed it!
On a more serious note, I wanted to read
this because it also has a nice little history of how Western doctors used to
deal with their patients. It seems that the posh ones didn’t bother talking to
their patients directly; they wrote letters to each other. Because actually
seeing someone and possibly viewing nasty body bits was just too eeeeeewwww.
I have a feeling that this is what
influenced early mental health practitioners to adopt the
stand-back-and-don’t-engage policy that still permeates the profession today. As
I’m a therapist, I found a lot of food for thought in this book
as well as a lot of giggles.
I would very much recommend How To Remove a
Brain. However, I do worry that with the present hate campaign against science,
David Haviland’s book will add to this trend as it completely ignores all the
positive innovations. Still, let the truth prevail!
I received this book from the publishers
via NetGalley and am reviewing voluntarily
