Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages

by Nathan Belofsky

Overview

Discover the astonishing and peculiar history of medicine with this perfect gift for history buffs, doctors, and anyone looking to be amazed by the brilliant and bizarre ideas that shaped the world of medicine as we know it.

From the use of electric eels in ancient Egypt to medieval dentists burning candles to combat invisible worms, this book uncovers the weirdest medical practices throughout history, highlighting the most dubious ideas, strangest treatments, and biggest blunders. Entertaining, shocking, and sometimes stomach-turning, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward.

Did you know:

• Renaissance physicians timed surgical procedures according to the position of the stars?
• Blood from beheadings was believed to cure epilepsy?
• Dr. Walter Freeman, the world’s foremost practitioner of lobotomies, practiced his craft while traveling on family camping trips, hammering ice picks into the eye sockets of his patients in between hikes in the woods?

Strange Medicine is an illuminating panorama of medical history as you’ve never seen it before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101624586
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/02/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	276,775
File size:	720 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nathan Belofsky is the author of The Book of Strange and Curious Legal Oddities, which has been featured in the New Yorker and on Salon. He lives in Manhattan.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Chapter 1 Growing Pains 1

Chapter 2 Medicine's Dark Ages 15

Chapter 3 The "Renaissance" 45

Chapter 4 The Age of Heroic Medicine 93

Selected Bibliography 179

Index 201

Editorial Reviews

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!” Readers will be surprised to learn that some very important medical discoveries were near misses. Dr. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, for example, lay moldering for a decade before scientists developed it into a lifesaving antibiotic. Of course, there are plenty of medical adventures that, alas, failed to advance knowledge of the subject: one medieval physician prescribed swaddling torture victims in the skin of a “newly killed animal.” His most sage counsel? “If he is dead... do not attempt to treat.” Belofsky notes, however, that medicine sunk to its lowest point during its “Heroic Era.” In the late 1700s, Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry, would strap patients to chairs, hang them from the ceiling, and spin them “like tops for hours on end.” Modern medics weren’t much kinder. In 1946, Dr. Walter Freeman introduced lobotomies, using ice picks from his kitchen to perform the procedure, and packing up the wife, kids, and picks for summer tours of national parks while he did surgeries at local hospitals. Makes a shot in the rear seem like a walk in the park with Dr. Walt. Agent: Janet Rosen, Sheree Bykofsky Associates Inc. (July 2)

Publishers Weekly