Saturday, August 12, 2017

Review of How to Remove a Brain by David Haviland


How to remove a brain
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