The Doctor’s Dilemma: Preface on Doctors

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Before becoming a playwright he wrote music and literary criticism. Shaw used his writing to attack social problems such as education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. Shaw was particularly conscious of the exploitation of the working class. Since a botched operation on his foot, Shaw had little respect for the majority of doctors. The Doctors Dilemma is about a doctor who has discovered a cure for tuberculosis and is faced with the decision of whether to save a great artist or an unselfish friend who has not made a success of his life. The Prefaces written by Shaw tend to be more about Shaw's opinions on the issues addressed by the play than about the plays themselves. Often his prefaces are longer than the plays they introduce. In this preface Shaw "made it plain he regarded traditional medical treatment as dangerous quackery that should be replaced with sound public sanitation, good personal hygiene and diets devoid of meat." He says that vaccination against smallpox is "a particularly filthy piece of witchcraft."