药物简史：鸦片、奎宁、阿司匹林与我们的抗病故事

For years patients have placed their trust in doctors and the drugs they prescribe. Yet as Druin Burch’s thought-provoking history of medicine demonstrates our trust has often been misplaced. Only with the development of antibiotics after the Second World War did doctors begin to cure more than they killed but even in this supposedly advanced age patients feel victim to tragedies such as the Thalidomide scandal. Burch argues that the real heroes of medicine are the men and women who demonstrated the vital importance of controlled testing over the ‘intuition’ of doctors and encourages us to ask more questions about the new breed of wonder drugs, to question our own doctors and to press governments against handing control of our medicines, and our lives, to global drug companies. His book is both alarming and optimistic, and is essential reading.

德劳因·伯奇（Druin Burch），曾在英国东南部多家医院工作，现任牛津大学医院主治医生，并在牛津大学教授人类进化学、生理学、生态学等学科，并为《泰晤士报文学增刊》和《卫报》撰稿，著有关于维多利亚时代外科医生阿斯特利·帕斯顿·库珀（Astley Paston Cooper）的传记《挖掘死者》（Digging up the Dead）。