FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 349:1580 October 16, 2003 Number 16

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear

By William H. Helfand. 252 pp., illustrated. New York, The Grolier Club, 2002. (Distributed by University of Chicago Press, Chicago.) $40. ISBN 0-910672-40-7.

The popular circus showman P.T. Barnum once warned that "humbug" was everywhere in the medical profession. In Quack, Quack, Quack, William Helfand, a historian of pharmacy, proves Barnum right. A chronicle of quackery in picture and prose, Helfand's book examines the depths of medical chicanery in Western culture over the past 400 years. "Quacks have been with us forever," explains Helfand. Never "static," quackery has "modified its offering to adjust to new therapeutic discoveries and new means of communication," as well as "to almost any prevailing political and regulatory system."

Helfand demonstrates the adaptability of quackery with 183 fascinating images . . . [Full Text of this Article]

HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org Comments and questions? Please contact us. The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.