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The Alarming History of Medicine/Amusing Anecdotes from Hippocrates to Heart Transplants by Richard Gordon
Delightfully witty and richly informative, this book by the author of the classic Doctor in the House is a collection of anecdotes describing how the historical breakthroughs in medicine were really made. Using hilarious stories, based on actual facts, Gordon shows that most monumental discoveries were originally accidents. 24 pages of b&w photos & drawings.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
15 people are currently reading
357 people want to read
About the author
Richard Gordon
271 books43 followersRichard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere (born Gordon Stanley Ostlere on September 15, 1921), an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written several novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is most famous for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme starting with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.
Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.
The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.
The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.
Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.
The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.
The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 4, 2013
While there are many entertaining and interesting stories contained in this book, their presentation was too disjointed to be enjoyable - one story ends without feeling quite finished, yet the next paragraph heads abruptly into new territory. I actually enjoyed the dated British vernacular - it made the book read like the era it was telling stories from.
March 15, 2021
This was great fun. I'll come back to this again and again.
April 5, 2024
An oddity, hard to place the time period it was written (says 1993). Rambling writing style, almost like talking to a drunk at a bar. BUT- this drunk knows stuff!
Great perspective of how only recently we’ve made the huge medical advancements that we now take so much for granted. T’was only 50 years ago we were still coming to grips with antibiotics and organ transplants!
More fun, talking about “voodoo” medical pseudoscience that persists to this very day, where it came from, and why they are still a part of our healing tool kit.
Great perspective of how only recently we’ve made the huge medical advancements that we now take so much for granted. T’was only 50 years ago we were still coming to grips with antibiotics and organ transplants!
More fun, talking about “voodoo” medical pseudoscience that persists to this very day, where it came from, and why they are still a part of our healing tool kit.
March 26, 2023
Fiat lux
Mr. Gordon’s narrative covers some important checkpoints throughout medicine which revolutionized and refined technologies, entire line of thoughts, methods, practices, ideologies and parameters which were responsible for saving many lives and the evolution of science guided by the Hippocratic oath. Science was and still is interfering in the death business, which its stages shown by chronological order, to say the least, made dogmas very unhappy.
The medical profession has a well-documented history with memorable and easily identifiable thresholds. For example, the evolution of anaesthesia registered by the old thick books is a great triumph along with great consequences. Starting with nitrous oxide to exorcize the pain of childbirth, passing onto Ether and chloroform in the late 1800’s causing addictions, lung irritations, vomit crisis, cardiac arrests and death.
One thing is certain, we cannot take for granted. At early stages, the treatment for exposed fractures was necessarily amputation, the smoothest way for bloodletting was done by the leech creature, operations were done by barbers with a little more daring, obstetrics was invented necessarily to repair the damages done by childbirth at the countryside and not to mention countless epidemic wars which decimated nations letting us ever to wander.
It is also worth mentioning the battle against dogmas. It’s plain and simple: Medicines were beginning to show more effectiveness than prayers. It was not so long ago when Galeno (c. 132-200 d.C.) observed that Adam’s sons didn’t have a rib less in their cage, when Calvin in the midst 1500’s burned a man on the stake for discovering the pulmonary circulation and plastic surgery in the late 17th century was considered a sin, prohibited in Paris.
In all matters, it’s a culture of refinement, all well connected. From the heartbeat being measured in 1500’s by the movement of a pendulum, thermometers which needed to be sucked at least for 20 minutes and countless deaths in the history of herbalism all the way to the aseptic technique, the genome map and the x-ray, we began to turn diseases into symptoms. So, countless humble Nobel prize winners throughout the centuries tell the story of our fallibility, the trial-and-error tale still to be written.
Link to my highlights: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mlB2...
Mr. Gordon’s narrative covers some important checkpoints throughout medicine which revolutionized and refined technologies, entire line of thoughts, methods, practices, ideologies and parameters which were responsible for saving many lives and the evolution of science guided by the Hippocratic oath. Science was and still is interfering in the death business, which its stages shown by chronological order, to say the least, made dogmas very unhappy.
The medical profession has a well-documented history with memorable and easily identifiable thresholds. For example, the evolution of anaesthesia registered by the old thick books is a great triumph along with great consequences. Starting with nitrous oxide to exorcize the pain of childbirth, passing onto Ether and chloroform in the late 1800’s causing addictions, lung irritations, vomit crisis, cardiac arrests and death.
One thing is certain, we cannot take for granted. At early stages, the treatment for exposed fractures was necessarily amputation, the smoothest way for bloodletting was done by the leech creature, operations were done by barbers with a little more daring, obstetrics was invented necessarily to repair the damages done by childbirth at the countryside and not to mention countless epidemic wars which decimated nations letting us ever to wander.
It is also worth mentioning the battle against dogmas. It’s plain and simple: Medicines were beginning to show more effectiveness than prayers. It was not so long ago when Galeno (c. 132-200 d.C.) observed that Adam’s sons didn’t have a rib less in their cage, when Calvin in the midst 1500’s burned a man on the stake for discovering the pulmonary circulation and plastic surgery in the late 17th century was considered a sin, prohibited in Paris.
In all matters, it’s a culture of refinement, all well connected. From the heartbeat being measured in 1500’s by the movement of a pendulum, thermometers which needed to be sucked at least for 20 minutes and countless deaths in the history of herbalism all the way to the aseptic technique, the genome map and the x-ray, we began to turn diseases into symptoms. So, countless humble Nobel prize winners throughout the centuries tell the story of our fallibility, the trial-and-error tale still to be written.
Link to my highlights: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mlB2...
May 29, 2018
The only positive of this book was the listing of discoveries in chronological order. It was not amusing. It was offensive. Gordon disregards non-Western medical traditions and calls all sorts of topics "boring." His intended audience is British men who think as he does, even though the book was published in New York. Being almost 30 years old, ideas and certain facts are outdated. It did not include an index.
March 26, 2019
I could overlook the sloppy use of historical facts. I could even look over the just overall bad writing skills. But he lost me at "how refreshing in these prying days to discover a distinguished literary figure of the past who was definitely not a homosexual"as a way to end the story of a sexual promiscuous author. Just a weird comment and confusing way to end.
April 23, 2019
I love history and I love medical stories. Perfect, then, that I picked up this book, right? Alas, no. I hated the prose and I hated the less-than-anecdote snippets of history. I want the full story, not the Cliff Notes version, which focused on dates on which scientific-ish things occurred.
March 16, 2020
I tried to get into this book, but it is very badly written. The author is being so funny that I am unable to figure out what he's really talking about. The humor isn't there for me, and the episodes of medical mayhem are confusing.
August 21, 2025
There is a lot of information, but the concatenation criteria of all the information are a bit confusion. It looks like the author, trying to enrich the book, cramped a lot of things with not much of a correlation.
As a side note, the author has a wonderful sense of humor.
As a side note, the author has a wonderful sense of humor.
June 23, 2020
Conteúdo muito interessante mas que é extremamente comprometido pela escrita confusa.
February 22, 2022
I enjoy medical history and there were some fun and interesting anecdotes here, but I found the writing impossible to follow.
October 1, 2016
A funny and, as promised by the title, a frequently alarming collection of anecdotes.
On learning that anesthesia is better than hypnotism for surgical patients:
There was a bothersome joke about the initial transmission of HIV from monkeys to humans in Africa having something to do with the way people have sex over there, which I would like to think had some layers of sarcasm and irony coming from a medical expert, but I could not determine the intention. That may have been the only mention of Africa in the book.
Overall, it gives a perceptive focus on how people attempt to treat diseases when they fundamentally misunderstand the disease because they do not know, for example, that bacteria exist.
On learning that anesthesia is better than hypnotism for surgical patients:
"[Robert] Liston [1794-1847] amputated a right leg while Peter Squire, who ran a chemist’s shop in Oxford Street, gave ether from a sponge-filled inhaler like a port decanter. ‘This Yankee dodge, gentlemen, beats mesmerism hollow,’ conceded the vain, abrasive, aggressive surgeon, with powerfully significant generosity. In the painting of this historic operation, luckily the artist not the surgeon removes the wrong leg." (pp. 78-79)
There was a bothersome joke about the initial transmission of HIV from monkeys to humans in Africa having something to do with the way people have sex over there, which I would like to think had some layers of sarcasm and irony coming from a medical expert, but I could not determine the intention. That may have been the only mention of Africa in the book.
Overall, it gives a perceptive focus on how people attempt to treat diseases when they fundamentally misunderstand the disease because they do not know, for example, that bacteria exist.
October 19, 2014
He took an interesting topic and managed to make it very boring and incongruous. There is no logical smooth flow and the writing style is too old school and difficult to read for such an intense topic. I believe that when you are addressing a heavy topic you should keep the writing light else you loose the reader quickly.,There are too many references even though it's a historical book. Overall very disappointed. There are much better medical history books available.
September 11, 2014
Medicina é um tema que acaba interessando e fascinando a todos, médicos e pacientes, haja vista o sucesso que as séries médicas fazem na TV.
O livro traz uma série de curiosidades sobre o tema saúde, pacientes ilustres, origem de determinados medicamentos, crendices e superstições, doenças curiosas e suas curas, médicos excêntricos e seus métodos.
O livro traz uma série de curiosidades sobre o tema saúde, pacientes ilustres, origem de determinados medicamentos, crendices e superstições, doenças curiosas e suas curas, médicos excêntricos e seus métodos.
June 21, 2012
Interesting, but written more like notes for a book than a proper book. There are frequent oblique references to people and situations that are not previously mentioned in the book and never further explained.
July 21, 2012
Rather hard to read: he writes in British vernacular that's 30 years out of date. And he's got no patience for "non-medical" healing, dismisses it out-of-hand. But some of the fact-stuff is really interesting and funny.
November 13, 2008
Quite a bit of the English humor went over my head.
January 6, 2009
Makes me wonder how we got to where we are today.
Want to read
March 22, 2009Lent to ACP
September 1, 2009
Completely unreadable. Very surprised this book even made it to press.
November 2, 2009
Often funny, but severely overwrought.
November 8, 2012
Really dull, the author uses British English which makes it a bit difficult to understand at times. Not recommended.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews