Suburban Shaman

Medicine is not just about science. It's also about stories, and about the mingling of narratives among doctors, and between them and their patients.' So wrote Cecil Helman after 27 years as a family practitioner in and around London, interlaced with training and research as a medical anthropologist, comparing a wide variety of medical systems and other forms of healing. This unique combination of frontline health worker and detached academic informs the author's insights into what human suffering can teach us about ourselves and our own attitudes to health and illness, whether we are deliverers or recipients of healthcare.