Medicine: Doctor, Spare the Scalpel!

Medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years' time.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way.

A reputable doctor who agrees with Proust—Dr. Harry Bakwin, associate professor of pediatrics at New York University's College of Medicine—has drawn a shocking bill of particulars against some of medicine's modern fads. This children's specialist thinks there are far too many operations...

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