The Doctor's Dilemma - Softcover

Shaw, George Bernard

3.58

743 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595476709 ISBN 13: 9781595476708

Publisher: NuVision Publications, LLC, 2008

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

The thesis of this play, revolutionary for its time, was that medical doctors inevitably face a dilemma between the need to care for their patients and the need to practice often unnecessary operations on them in order to earn their livelihood. It was modelled on the behaviour of a prominent Ear Nose and Throat specialist in London who had developed a simple and harmless operation to remove the uvula. This benefitted none of his patients but made the surgeon concered a great deal of money. The play also attacked aspects of the germ theory of disease, and included socialist and anti-vivisectionist viewpoints.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

BERNARD SHAW was born in Dublin in 1856. After his arrival in London in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day: on Common Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish Question (1917) and The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). He undertook his own education at the British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre reviews, which were collected into several volumes such as Music in London 1890–1894 (3 vols, 1931); Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931); and Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols, 1931). He also wrote five novels and some shorter fiction, including The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales and Cashel Byron’s Profession, both published in Penguin’s Bernard Shaw Library.

He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His plays fall into several categories: ‘Plays Pleasant’; ‘Plays Unpleasant’; comedies; chronicle-plays; ‘metabiological Pentateuch’ (Back to Methuselah, a series of plays); and ‘political extravaganzas’. Bernard Shaw died in 1950.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.