RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Knock: a study in medical cynicism
JF Medical Humanities
JO J Med Humanit
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 14
OP 18
DO 10.1136/mh.28.1.14
VO 28
IS 1
A1 I Bamforth
YR 2002
UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/28/1/14.abstract
AB French literature has shown an enduring fascination with the social figure of the doctor. In Jules Romains' amusing play Knock (1922), and in its later film version (1951), the doctor as deceiver returns to centrestage with a flourish. Molière's seventeenth-century figures were mostly quacks and mountebanks; Knock is something new: he is a health messiah. By enforcing a mental and social hygiene based on fear, Knock brings a small rural population under his sway. Insouciance is banished by artful consciousness-raising. A society mobilises under the banner of medicine. But who is Dr Knock?