Abstract

Health is on of those subjects that seems easy to define and then, the closer one gets, is more and more difficult to understand. Does the health of a schizophrenic really improve by being sedated and kept in an asylum? Is a course of Prozac or psychotherapy aimed to make someone happy really a medicine? These incompatible views are most visible in the NHS which has over the decades become the focus of all these projections of health. At the expense of the taxpayer many are being cured while there is no money for some of those who have physical ailments in a real sense. In this book, Theodore Dalrymple sets out to tear into the myths that he believes our politicians have created, with anecdotes from his own experience as a doctor.