The range offered by this literary companion to medicine goes from Dickens, with his unforgettable Bob Sawyer and Sarah Gamp, to the doctors characterized by Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh; from Dr Rabelais and Dr Oliver Goldsmith to Emile Zola's send-up of Lourdes and Thomas Mann's vanished world of Swiss TB sanatoriums; from George Orwell and How the Poor Die to Eric Segal's riotous Doctors, and from Brillat-Savarin's ironic table-talk of 19th-century slimmers to Boswell's disorderly sex life and the hilarity of the Parisian music hall star, Le Petomane. This anthology contains samples of tragedy, comedy and pathos which reflect the eternal fascination of human beings with their health and ills, and with those devoted to curing them.