I saw the 2025 book Doc or Quack: Science and Anti-Science in Modern Medicine (by Sander L. Gilman, on Reaktion Books, UK) and thought I had to read it right away.

It seems like a well-researched work, but 70 pages in, I think there needs to be a re-edited or re-written edition because, so far, it is a collection of historical information the point of which is unclear. In fact, the point the author is trying to make—at least, the impression I have of what point the author is trying to make—keeps shifting. The reason for this, it seems to me, is that there are little to no connecting phrases between sentences: no ‘therefore’, ‘nonetheless’, ‘despite’, ‘moreover’, ‘yet’, ‘furthermore’, ‘similarly’, ‘in contrast’, ‘unlike’, ‘having said that’, etc. The sentences that seem to be taking us in different directions follow one another (at least for the first 70 pages) without any indication of what the author wants us to make of them.

What I’ve been able to work out is that the definition of ‘quack’ was at best arbitrary and at worst entirely based on power. I was aided in reaching this conclusion by having read half a dozen other books on the history of medicine. Those other books claimed quite clearly that so-called mainstream medicine did more harm than good prior to the twentieth century. This helps me try to nail down what the author is getting at, but I cannot be certain I’m not misunderstanding because every two or three sentences, he seems to be heading off in a new direction.

For instance, the passages discussing how the Third Reich planned to make homeopathy part of their “legitimate” institution of medicine (and then got distracted) have come up a couple of times without any clear explanation of what the author is getting at by bringing up that history.Reaktion Books needs to take another editorial pass through this work, which promises to be very enlightening, but fails to be decipherable.