C&W COURSES & J R Coll Physicians Edinb 2019; 49: 65–9 | doi: 10.4997/JRCPE.2019.114 PAPER WORKSHOPS Petr Skrabanek: the abominable no-man HistorySeamus O’Mahony1 & Humanities Petr Skrabanek (1940–94) was a Czech-born doctor, polemicist and literary Correspondence to: scholar. He quali ed in medicine in Ireland, and spent most of his career Seamus O’Mahony Abstract at the Medical School of Trinity College Dublin. He was an outspoken critic Gastroenterology Unit of modern medicine, particularly of what he called ‘coercive healthism’. Cork University Hospital Skrabanek’s sceptical and iconoclastic ideas are more relevant today than Wilton ever. This essay aims to rekindle interest in his life and work. Cork Ireland Keywords: environmental tobacco smoke, healthism, medicalisation, Skrabanek Email: Financial and Competing Interests: No confl ict of interests declared
[email protected] Introduction and biography his sharp pen was directed at population medicine and the apostles of lifestyle – those who preached the fallacy Petr Skranabek was born on 27 October 1940 in Náchod, of cheating death … the medical community began to Czechoslovakia.1 He entered Charles University in Prague adopt him as a gadfl y who roamed the world adding zip RCPE MSc courses in 1957, taking a degree in chemistry. He then became and controversy to otherwise anodyne meetings.2 The College offers two online courses completed a researcher at the Institute for Toxicology and Forensic Medicine in Prague. In 1962, he was appointed Head of the Skrabanek attacked screening, ‘risk-factor’ epidemiology part-time over 3 years, in partnership with the Toxicology Department in the Institute for Forensic Medicine and political attempts to control the lifestyles of individuals.