Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Politics & government

STRANGE MEDICINE

Nathan Belofsky

A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages

An irreverent jaunt through medical history’s most dubious ideas, bizarre treatments, and biggest blunders.

The ancient Egyptians applied electric eels to cure migraines. Medieval dentists burned candles in patients’ mouths to kill invisible worms gnawing at their teeth. Renaissance physicians, by law, timed surgical procedures with the position of the stars, and instructed epileptics to collect fresh blood from the newly beheaded.

Highlighting bad science, oafish behavior, and stomach-turning procedures that hurt more than helped, Strange Medicine presents extraordinary but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who gave a whole new meaning to clinical trials!

Available products
Book Published 2013-07-02 by Perigee
Book Published 2013-07-02 by Perigee

Comments

For a very long time, medical professionals often did more damage than healing. As recently as the 1800s, physicians were "medical wrecking balls," inflicting on the sick therapies as extreme as bloodletting, purging, and blistering. Belofsky offers a brief, unnerving, and fascinating romp through medical history, from Babylonia to Greece, the Roman Empire, medieval times, the Renaissance, and nineteenth-century America. Strange Medicine depicts doctors who were frequently ferocious and relentless but only occasionally inventive and ingenious.

Polish (Wydawnictwo RM); Japanese (Hara Shobo), and Romanian (Editura A II SRL)

Belofsky (The Book of Strange and Curious Legal Oddities) conjures horror and hilarity--sometimes at the same time-in this cheeky history of 2,400 years of doctors doing "more harm than good" and occasionally fumbling their way toward "Eureka!", medicine sunk to its lowest point during its "Heroic Era." Makes a shot in the rear seem like a walk in the park.