The medical establishment has become a major threat to health'. So begins Ivan Illich's spirited and reasoned attack upon the mythic prestige of contemporary medicines, examining the customs and rituals conducted by the medical profession. Relentlessly and with full documentation taken from recognized medical sources Illich proves the impotence of medical services to change life expectancy, the insignificance of most clinical care in curing disease, the magnitude of medically inflicted damage to health, and the futility of medical and political counter measures.

Ivan Illich was born in Vienna to a Croatian father and Sephardic-Jewish mother, and had as native languages Italian, French and German. He later learnt Serbo-Croatian, the language of his grand-fathers, then Ancient Greek and Latin, as well as Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. Thereafter, he studied histology and crystallography at the University of Florence (Italy), theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the Vatican (1942-1946) and medieval history in Salzburg. He is the author of Tools for Conviviality, The Right to Useful Unemployment, Energy and Equity, Limits to Medicine, Shadow Work, Gender, H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind, Deschooling Society and In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses 1978-1990. Illich lived much of his life in Mexico and the United States, he died in 2002.