Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates
by David Wootton
Oxford University Press, £9.99 (pb), ISBN 978-0-19-921279-8

The main theme of this book is that, until the modern period, beginning in the middle of the 19th century, professional medicine did, on balance, more harm than good. A subsidiary theme is that very often, even when the knowledge which might improve things was available, it was neglected for long periods. Real change was dependent in particular on, first, the use of controlled experiments and statistical comparison, and second, the germ theory of disease. Two especially significant points were, respectively, John Snow’s systematic analysis of the incidence of cholera in the 1850s, narrowing the causes down to the water supply, and Joseph Lister’s introduction of antiseptics from 1865. Before this, medicine derived largely from the Hippocratic tradition that diseases were not entities in themselves, but mainly or wholly due to imbalances in the individual (originally, in the ‘humours’). The main methods were bleeding, purges and emetics, especially the first, which was also particularly harmful. One might note, however, that current thinking is reinstating the individual, for example in variations in genetic susceptibility to illnesses, and the effects of life-style, e.g. obesity.
To explain the lack of progress, Wootton offers a combination of factors, including vested interests, difficulties of communication, mere accident, etc. He mentions, but could have developed further, the whole question of professionalism, which can raise standards but can also produce stagnation and self-interest. Another large question is the relationship of medicine, magic and religion, but one book cannot deal with everything. Wootton also criticizes other historians of medicine, though, oddly, usually not naming them. He objects both to a Whig view of natural, if not steady, progress and a relativist view that the past must be judged by its own criteria. He rightly warns against assuming that the ‘medicine’ of past times was essentially the same thing as we mean by the word, or at least an early attempt at it. He seems to be aiming at both a general and a specialist readership, and the writing is certainly clear and always interesting. Curiously, there is no bibliography, only “further reading”. There is also a website, www.badmedicine.co.uk.

John Radford

Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century
by Marina Warner
Oxford University Press, £18.99, ISBN 978-0-19-929994-2

Marina Warner has produced an extremely corporeal book, nearly 500 pages long, exploring the intangible: our relationship to concepts of the soul and the ethereal, and the way that relationship has been expressed in metaphor (‘the symbolic imagination’), in the context of science, religion and art, from the Enlightenment to the present. She does so in an erudite and scholarly cultural history (perhaps too much so for the general but interested reader) that rummages through obscure byways to find associations between seemingly disparate manifestations of a vitalistic conception of human existence. By its nature, such a wideranging study has to rely heavily on other sources and some have been digested better than others. Warner is clearly on familiar territory for example when discussing Renaissance science, Roman Catholic arcana or photography, less so when tackling the complexities of cinema history or nineteenth- century psychical research (and this partial list itself gives an idea of her eclecticism). Whatever she turns her hand to always elicits interesting insights. Inevitably, however, where there is an emphasis on breadth, depth tends to suffer.
The language is at times elliptical and the prose dense and allusive. Links can be difficult to follow as she lays out topics in a bricolage, often leaving the reader desperate for connective tissue and more sense of an overarching thesis, rather than a juxtaposition of fascinating snippets with too little to synthesize them. The result is a sense of breathlessness giving rise to a frequent feeling of puzzlement over what seems a collection of arbitrary – if fascinating – ingredients stirred into the mix.
Where the book really comes alive is when Warner foregrounds her own experiences, such as an uncanny moment in the shrine of Santa Caterina de’ Vigri in Bologna, or weighing a sample of ‘ectoplasm’ at Cambridge. In the end perhaps she is a poet rather than a historian, yet her effort to clothe the immaterial has given us a rich pudding to pull apart and examine in further detail.

Tom Ruffles

How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic
by Madsen Pirie
Continuum, £8.99 (pb), ISBN 878-0-8264-9894-6

A catalogue of those hardy perennials of human reasoning, fallacies, might seem like something for the specialist only, but this lively, even breezy, guide is a highly readable handbook, running alphabetically from abusive analogy to wishful thinking. Along the way we find, of course, the classic fallacies of affirming the consequent, the undistributed middle and argumentum ad hominem. Alongside them are perhaps less well-known types such as poisoning the well, the runaway train and Thatcher’s blame, the latter two, at least, not so often mentioned by Aristotle and his colleagues.

Each of the 80-odd entries is a clear and careful explanation of a fallacy, but what distinguishes this book from other books on logic and argumentation is a Machiavellian coda in each case, suggesting how an unscrupulous reader might make skillful use of the fallacy in order to beat an opponent. Naturally, the fair-minded, noble, truth-seeking readers of this journal would never dream of deliberately using invalid arguments to help demolish the cherished, time-honoured and universally popular theories and stories of life-threatening charlatans and psychic crooks. Would they?

Paul Taylor

Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives
by Richard Wiseman
Pan Macmillan, £9.99, ISBN 978-0-230-70215-8

In this eminently readable survey, Wiseman introduces the general reader to a range of intriguing findings in psychology by outlining his own diverse areas of research. The difference between this and most psychology books is explained in the introduction: “unlike the vast majority of psychological research, these studies have something quirky about them. Some use mainstream methods to investigate unusual topics. Others use unusual methods to investigate mainstream topics.”
The first chapter counters the fatuities of astrology with the new science of chronopsychology: “What does your date of birth really say about you?” In a chapter focussing on superstition, Wiseman emphasizes that “superstitious beliefs are not just about the harmless touching of wood or crossing of fingers. Instead, beliefs can affect house prices, the number of people injured and killed in road accidents, abortion rates, and monthly death statistics, and can even force hospitals to waste significant amounts of funding on unnecessary patient care.”
The late Vic Tandy once gave a fascinating talk to Skeptics in the Pub about the role of infrasound in provoking unusual experiences which are then given supernatural interpretations. Wiseman has pursued this line of research by means of an experimental concert with an infrasound component, and he is not the only one to think there’s something in this. Another team’s research into sacred experiences “suggests that people who experience a sense of spirituality in church may be reacting to the extreme bass sound produced by the [organ] pipes.”
There are also chapters on deception, decision-making, humour and altruism. The epilogue provides antidotes to boring dinner parties, in the form of a list of factoids from the book, selected by guests at experimental dinner parties organized by the author. The top factoid is a quirkology classic: “People would rather wear a sweater that has been dropped in dog faeces and not washed, than one that has been dry-cleaned but used to belong to a mass-murderer.” Nowt so queer as folk.

Nick Pope: The Man Who Left the Mod (REGION 1) (NTSC)
directed by Philip Gardiner
Reality Films, £27.99, EAN 883629172309

If you really expect anything to be unveiled, be prepared for disappointment. There are descriptions of a number of cases that will be no revelation to anyone who has a passing familiarity with ufology, plus a little of Nick Pope’s biography as a desk jockey at the MOD, some superficial musings on psychology, and opinions on the extra-terrestrial hypothesis (“can’t be ruled out”, it’s a “possible explanation” for UFOs) at odds with his firm acceptance of it when discussing specific instances. If he has any real beans, Pope is not spilling them.There is a lot of “I can’t go into that” on defence issues, implying weighty secret knowledge, but no revelations to illuminate the UFO phenomenon. A definite mystery, though, is why an hour-long interview shot on camcorder in what is presumably a hotel room required four producers.

The makers must have been aware of the inherent dullness of the project, so Pope’s musings are subjected to tricksy camera angles and image treatment, the lot overlaid with annoying background music that sounds as though they left the radio on. As for the repeated references to being “Britain’s Fox Mulder”, that schtik is rather dated but eagerly promoted by Pope to make him seem interesting. Alas, the impression unintentionally conveyed is that Pope was given the UFO desk not as some kind of reward but because it was seen as unimportant in MOD terms, and it is a tribute to his chutzpah that he has drummed it up by portraying it as a “special position”, as it says on the cover, with himself as “chief UFO investigator”. He comes across as self-satisfied, and the film as a vanity project. The enterprise is saved, however, by the amusing UFO-themed music video tacked on the end. And a name-check for The Skeptic’s esteemed co-editor, Professor Chris French.

Tom Ruffles

Who Shot JFK?
by Robin Ramsay
Pocket Essentials, £9.99, ISBN 978-1-84243-232-7

Readers of The Skeptic may feel they have had enough of the Kennedy assassination, but here comes another book to add to the thousand or so published since that day in Dallas. At least this one is blessedly brief, though that is about all that can be said in its favour. Ramsay criticizes others’ ignorance of the assassination, but his own is truly remarkable. He tells us he accepts Oswald’s statement that he was a patsy, and states that there was no eyewitness evidence that he was at the window (there was), that he didn’t have time to get to where a policeman saw him just after the shots were fired (he did), that his rifle was a poor weapon (it wasn’t), that the photographs of him with the rifle were faked (they weren’t), that six or seven shots were fired (the overwhelming evidence is there were only three), that a shot hit the car (no corresponding damage was found), that Kennedy’s backwards movement means he was shot from in front (it doesn’t), that the “magic bullet” which wounded Kennedy and Connally was undamaged (it wasn’t), etc.

He spends lots of time and space on odd theorists whose views are on websites or in books from obscure publishers (I have never heard of most of them in decades of library work), but never mentions Gerald Posner’s excellent Case Closed, which covers many of the points he raises. Ramsay rightly says there is no evidence that Clay Shaw, charged with Kennedy’s murder by Jim Garrison, had anything to do with it, but fails to bring out the full grotesquerie of that shameful episode, grossly distorted in the film JFK. He rubbishes some wild theories, but only to introduce even dafter ideas. For example, he scorns David Lifton’s silly book Best Evidence (Kennedy’s body was tampered with before the autopsy, sufficiently well to fool the pathologists), but then turns to an alternative theory – two corpses! And whose was the other body? Why, J.D. Tippit, the policeman murdered by Oswald soon after the assassination, who is said to have resembled Kennedy (he didn’t). Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, is credited with a major role in the “conspiracy” and is said to have been a Chicago Mob representative in Dallas, though there is no doubt that he was a dim, sad, mentally unstable born loser with a pathetic “colourful character” act who liked to feel “in” on sensational events, boasted of his “connections” with the police, press, etc., and couldn’t keep his mouth shut. No-one with any sense would ever have entrusted him with anything important. Ramsay blames Kennedy’s successor, Johnson, but, of course, with no concrete evidence. Saying some people wanted Kennedy dead (an unremarkable thing to say about any powerful person) is not the same as saying any of them actually encompassed his death.

Ray Ward