Cover image for Sawbones : the horrifying, hilarious road to modern medicine
Title:
Sawbones : the horrifying, hilarious road to modern medicine
Alternate title:
Sawbones : the book

Sawbones book
Summary:
"Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not. But for thousands of years, people have done things like this--and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare. And some of the terrifying detours along the way. Every week, Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin amaze, amuse, and gross out (depending on the week) hundreds of thousands of avid listeners to their podcast, Sawbones. Consistently rated a top podcast on iTunes, with over 15 million total downloads, this rollicking journey through thousands of years of medical mishaps and miracles is not only hilarious but downright educational. While you may never even consider applying boiled weasel to your forehead (once the height of sophistication when it came to headache cures), you will almost certainly face some questionable medical advice in your everyday life (we're looking at you, raw water!) and be better able to figure out if this is a miracle cure (it's not) or a scam."-- Amazon.com summary.
Contents:
Part I: The unnerving. The resurrection men ; Opium ; An electrifying experience ; Weight loss ; Charcoal ; The Black Plague ; Pliny the Elder ; Erectile dysfunction ; Spontaneous combustion ; The doctor is in ; Trepanation -- Chapter II: The gross. Mummy medicine ; Mercury ; The guthole bromance ; A piece of your mind ; The unkillable Phineas Gage ; Phrenology ; The man who drank poop ; Robert Liston ; Urine luck! ; Radium ; Humorism ; The doctor is in ; The straight poop -- Chapter III: The weird. The Dancing Plague ; Curtis Howe Springer ; Smoke 'em if you got 'em ; A titanic case of nausea ; Arsenic ; Paracelsus ; Honey ; Self-experimentation ; Homeopathy ; The doctor is in -- Chapter IV: The awesome. The poison squad ; Bloodletting ; Death by chocolate ; John Harvey Kellogg ; Parrot fever ; Detox ; Vinegar ; Polio vaccine ; The doctor is in.
Physical Description:
213 pages : color illustrations ; 24 cm
Publisher:
Weldon Owen, Inc.,
Publication Date:
2018
ISBN:
9781681883816
Publication Information:
San Francisco, CA : Weldon Owen, Inc., [2018]
Call Number:
610.9 MCELROY
Holds: Copies: