Medieval dentists burned candles in patients’ mouths to kill invisible worms gnawing at their teeth. Renaissance physicians timed surgical procedures according to the position of the stars, and instructed epileptics to collect fresh blood from the newly beheaded. Dr. Walter freeman, the world’s foremost practitioner of lobotomies, practiced his craft while traveling on family camping trips, cramming the back of the station wagon with kids—and surgical tools—then 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. Strange medicine casts a gimlet eye on the practice of medicine through the ages that highlights the most dubious ideas, bizarre treatments, and biggest blunders. Perigee Books.
Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
Brilliant, and brazenly handsome, outspoken, Mütter was flamboyant in every aspect of his life. T. Barnum of the surgery room. ”. Although he died at just forty-eight, mütter was an audacious medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time.
A mesmerizing biography of the brilliant and eccentric medical innovator who revolutionized American surgery and founded the country’s most famous museum of medical oddities Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia, performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools—or even wash his hands.
Mütter’s marvels interweaves an eye-opening portrait of nineteenth-century medicine with the riveting biography of a man once described as the “P. Award-winning writer cristin o’keefe aptowicz vividly chronicles how Mütter’s efforts helped establish Philadelphia as a global mecca for medical innovation—despite intense resistance from his numerous rivals.
This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the mid-nineteenth century.
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, and the fountain of youth? Well, beauty, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, trial and error, and straight-up scams.
When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison—was dosed like Viagra.
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
Eerie and illuminating, the butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world. Winner, 2018 PEN/E. O. Wilson prize for literary science writingshort-listed for the 2018 wellcome book prizea top 10 science book of fall 2017, bestselling author of Dead Wake In The Butchering Art, Publishers WeeklyA Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian "Warning: She spares no detail!" ―Erik Larson, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875.
She conjures up early operating theaters―no place for the squeamish―and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. Workman. At a time when surgery couldn’t have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the riddle and change the course of history.
Fitzharris dramatically reconstructs Lister’s career path to his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection and could be countered by a sterilizing agent applied to wounds.
Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
Then more. In late-seventeenth-century england an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome―a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure. With her signature mix of in-depth research and storytelling, and not a little dark humor, Jennifer Wright explores history’s most gripping and deadly outbreaks, and ultimately looks at the surprising ways they’ve shaped history and humanity for almost as long as anyone can remember.
Henry Holt and Co. And in turn-of-the-century new york, an Irish cook caused two lethal outbreaks of typhoid fever, a case that transformed her into the notorious Typhoid Mary. Throughout time, humans have been terrified and fascinated by the diseases history and circumstance have dropped on them. Some of their responses to those outbreaks are almost too strange to believe in hindsight.
A witty, in a small town in alsace, to leprosy, to polio―and a celebration of the heroes who fought themIn 1518, irreverent tour of history's worst plagues―from the Antonine Plague, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her.
The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery
A captivating portrait of his ruthless devotion to uncovering the secrets of the human body, performing pioneering medical experiments, and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to do so—including body snatching, and infecting himself with venereal disease—this rich historical narrative at last acknowledges this fascinating man and the debt we owe him today.
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The Victorian Book of the Dead
Some of the stories in the victorian book of the dead *mourning bicycles, black boudoirs, and sable cigarettes for the up-to-date widow *a child ghost who beckoned for her father to follow her into death *black dogs and shrieking banshee who foretold death and disaster *the widow who fired the undertaker who would not give her trading stamps.
Henry Holt and Co. A corpse that spontaneously combusted in the coffin *the fiendish parrot who murdered his mistress *The petrified corpse furniture created by Professor Segato *visions of the Grim Reaper and the Angel of Death *the man who lived in the tomb of his wife *A mourning wreath made from the hair of a murdered family *interviews with undertakers, post-mortem photographers and morgue attendants And many more tales from the crypts.
Workman. The victorian book of the dead unearths extraordinary tales of Victorian funeral fads and fancies, premature burial, bizarre deaths, death omens, ghost stories, gallows humor, post-mortem photographs, mourning novelties, and funeral disasters.
Mütter Museum Historic Medical Photographs
Featured are poignant, aesthetically accomplished works ranging from Civil War photographs showing injury and recovery, to pathological anomalies, to the ravages of diseases not yet conquered in the 19th century, to psychological disorders. Used book in Good Condition. Many were taken by talented photographers between the 1860s and the 1940s as records for physicians to share among colleagues and to track patients’ conditions, X ray, micrography, and demonstrate various techniques used in medical photography including the daguerreotype, and traditional portrait-style photography.
Henry Holt and Co. The first book on the mütter Museum contain artful images of the museum's fascinating exhibits shot by contemporary fine art photographers.
Silent Witnesses: The Often Gruesome but Always Fascinating History of Forensic Science
. Henry Holt and Co. Edmond locard, the french scientist whose guiding principle, 000 crimes; and alphonse bertillon, the “French Sherlock Holmes”; Edward Heinrich, ” who is credited with having solved more than 2, “no two individuals share the same characteristics, “Wizard of Berkeley, ” became the core of criminal identification.
Readers are introduced to such fascinating figures as Dr. Used book in Good Condition. Workman. Lee bailey, the 1849 murder of a wealthy boston businessman that demonstrated how difficult it is to successfully dispose of a corpse, the seminal 1936 murder that demonstrated the usefulness of the microscope in examining trace evidence, and many others.
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Strange History Strange Series
Or A. D. You’ll be wondering wtf!this exciting title from the folks at the Bathroom Readers' Institute contains the strangest short history articles from over 30 Bathroom Readers—along with 50 all-new pages. Strange History. Used book in Good Condition. Henry Holt and Co. Read about…the curse of macbethstupid history: hollywood stylethe secret lsd experiments of the 1960sin search of the lost “cloud People” of PeruThe Swedish queen who declared war on fleasUnearthing the past with the Outhouse DetectivesThe Apollo astronaut who swears he saw a UFOHow to brew a batch of 5, 000-year-old beerThe brutal bloodbaths at Rome’s ColiseumGhostly soup from ancient ChinaThe bathroom of the 1970s And much, much more! Workman.
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Medicine: The Definitive Illustrated History
Dk publishing Dorling Kindersley. Henry Holt and Co. Clear diagrams explain major diseases, such as cancer, surgical instruments, and the progression of treatment over the centuries, and enhance understanding of human anatomy, setting the great milestones of medical history in their wider social context.
. Used book in Good Condition. Strange History. Medicine tells the fascinating story of the discipline, charting developments in healing, diagnosis, surgery, from ancient times to the present day, and drugs in a vividly visual and accessible format. Follow the gory pitfalls and the miraculous breakthroughs of medical history from trepanning, bloodletting, and body snatching to the latest developments in IVF and gene therapy.
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