In this pithy abecedarium, doctor and poet Iain Bamforth takes a close look at the conflict of values embodied in what we call medicine – never entirely a science and no longer quite the art it used to be. Bamforth brings his wide experience of medicine around the world, from the high-tech American Hospital of Paris to the community health centres of Papua, together with his engaging interest in the stranger manifestations of medical matters in relation to art, literature and culture – such as the mysterious ‘Stendhal’s syndrome’, which caused 106 tourists in Florence to be hospitalised due to an overload of sublime Renaissance art.

 'Many of the most interesting moments in A Doctor's Dictionary are thrown up almost in passing, such as the specifically English nature of "fairness" as a concept, the concordance of Pasteur's germ theory with his hatred of mass society, and Hitler's possibly life-changing experience of being treated for "hysterical blindness" in the First World War [...] a cabinet of curiosities with a more serious underlying theme of humanity in medicine'. - 'Humane Acts',  Times Literary Supplement 11.12.2015.