The Doctor’s Dinner Party

This book is absolutely hilarious. The cheek and audacity of author Ibn Buṭlān positively leaps off the page and each anecdote is funnier and more preposterous than the last. This wonderful translation is a must-read book for deep levels of laughter and will make a great gift for anyone working in or around a hospital. This is a visceral parody of collective dietary wisdom and rancorous diners.

In summary, The Doctors’ Dinner Party is an eleventh-century satirical novella set within a medical milieu. It recounts the invitation of a young, visiting physician to dine with a group of senior practitioners in a provincial city, whose dinner-table conversation gradually exposes a profound professional incompetence. Composed by the accomplished physician Ibn Buṭlān, the work critiques the hypocrisy and pretensions of quack doctors while simultaneously demonstrating the author’s own technical mastery of medical theory and practice, including surgery, bloodletting, and pharmacology. Ibn Buṭlān situates his opaque satire within a learned tradition through references to classical authorities such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Socrates.