James Le Fanu

Costs of a Cure

The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery

By

The Bodley Head 284pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

Medicine, over the past fifty years, has metamorphosed from a modest pursuit of limited effectiveness into a massive global phenomenon employing millions and costing hundreds of billions. Now, in the vast shiny palaces that modern hospitals have become, previously unimaginable goals such as transplanting organs have become routine, while every year tens of thousands doomed to blindness from cataracts or immobility from crippling arthritis have their sight and movement restored. Medicine has become the most visible example of the fulfilment of the great enlightenment project in which scientific progress vanquishes the twin evils of ignorance and suffering for the benefit of all.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • What did London look like in the 6th Century? Rory Naismith's 'Citadel of the Saxons' tries to answer that questi… ,
    • Start your week with a dose of Russian Revolutionary zeal. Donald Rayfield reviews Tobie Mathew's 'Greetings From t… ,
    • A treat from the LR Archive: exactly 20 years ago, Malcolm Bradbury reviewed John Updike's 'Bech at Bay' ,
    • ‘When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack’ John Lanchester's dy… ,
    • Man with a Bloody Paintbrush: Robin Simon on Lucian Freud ,
    • Jane Ridley reviews The Diaries of Kenneth Rose (ed. D R Thorpe) ,
    • ‘Look,’ says Trump. ‘The fact is I’m only human.’ On the evidence of this book that point is debatable. From the A… ,
    Follow Us