Books: Sick-Note Britain: How Social Problems Became Medical Issues : Rising Levels of Sickness are a Social Phenomenon.

Adrian Massey C Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd , 2019 , HB, 272 pp, £20.00 , 978-1787381223 Over 10 million sick-notes per annum may comprise as much as 10% of our workload. According to Adrian Massey, an experienced occupational health physician, most of this is an anachronistic charade. If 300 pages on sickness certification fill you with trepidation, persevere. This thought-provoking polemic is both erudite and wickedly entertaining. Massey early on acknowledges a debt to the greatest of medicine’s iconoclasts. Ivan Illich coined the term ‘cultural iatrogenesis’ for the destruction of traditional ways of dealing with, and making sense of, death, suffering, and sickness.1 The medicalisation of everyday life proceeds apace. We the shamans continue to take confession and confer absolution. Meanwhile, the public retains a credulous belief in medical omnipotence and continues …