Doctors Who Kill

Description

212 pages
$25.95
ISBN 1-895735-04-1
DDC 364.1'523'0922

Author

Year

1993

Contributor

Reviewed by Tony Barclay

Tony Barclay is a retired juvenile corrections probation officer and a
former public-health research associate at the University of Toronto.

Review

Doctors Who Kill is a collection of columns Max Haines wrote for The
Toronto Sun. There are some 46 stories, set in the 19th and 20th
centuries, of physician–murderers from Canada, the United States,
Britain, and France. All of the cases generated considerable interest in
their time.

Haines writes in a racy, popular style—popular in the sense of being
not only readable but also cliché-ridden and often ungrammatical. The
author has a gift for heavy-handed sarcasm. For example, the physicians
are always referred to as “the good Doctor. ...” The centrepiece of
these stories is how the doctors used their medical skills to kill, not
cure.

Fans of Haines’s columns will undoubtedly enjoy these stories, as
will those who like to see doctors knocked off their pedestals.

Citation

Haines, Max., “Doctors Who Kill,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed October 7, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/13267.