Bizarre Medical Ideas

Bizarre Medical Ideas PDF Author: Edzard Ernst
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031551028
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description

Bizarre Medical Ideas

Bizarre Medical Ideas PDF Author: Edzard Ernst
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031551028
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description


Strange Medicine

Strange Medicine PDF Author: Nathan Belofsky
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399159959
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
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.

A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities

A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities PDF Author: Jan Bondeson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501733451
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Long ago, curiosities were arranged in cabinets for display: a dried mermaid might be next to a giant's shinbone, the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In ten essays, Jan Bondeson brings a physician's diagnostic skills to various unexpected, gruesome, and extraordinary aspects of the history of medicine: spontaneous human combustion, colonies of snakes and frogs living in a person's stomach, kings and emperors devoured by lice, vicious tribes of tailed men, and the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal. Bondeson tells the story of Mary Toft, who gained notoriety in 1726 when she allegedly gave birth to seventeen rabbits. King George I, the Prince of Wales, and the court physicians attributed these monstrous births to a "maternal impression" because Mary had longed for a meal of rabbit while pregnant. Bondeson explains that the fallacy of maternal impressions, conspicuous in the novels of Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, has ancient roots in Chinese and Babylonian manuscripts. Bondeson also presents the tragic case of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Indian woman with thick hair growing over her body and a massive overgrowth of the gums that gave her a simian or ape-like appearance. Called the Ape Woman, she was exhibited all over the world. After her death in 1860, Julia's husband, who had also been her impresario, had her body mummified and continued to exhibit it throughout Europe. Bondeson tracked the mummy down and managed to diagnose Julia Pastrana's condition as the result of a rare genetic syndrome.

A Practical Treatise on Impotence, Sterility and Allied Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs

A Practical Treatise on Impotence, Sterility and Allied Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs PDF Author: Samuel Weissell Gross
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Generative organs
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description


Genius on the Edge

Genius on the Edge PDF Author: Gerald Imber
Publisher: Kaplan Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Genius on the Edge introduces the public to the man who revolutionized modern surgery at the same time it weaves a compelling biography with a fascinating tour of American medicine at the turn of the 19th century. Coming of age in the wake of the Civil War, William Stewart Halsted became a doctor in an era when surgery was a dangerous game of chance. By the time of his death in 1922, Halsted had transformed surgery and had pioneered techniques and procedures that are routine in today's operating rooms. But this came at a high price-drug addiction and alienation from his friends and family. His enormous professional accomplishments, eccentric personal behavior, and lifetime of drug addiction defy conventional wisdom. In the first comprehensive portrait of this complex and indisputably brilliant man, author Gerald Imber-a renowned plastic surgeon himself-takes readers to the upper echelons of society in New York City and Baltimore, blending tales of Gilded Age decadence with captivating accounts from the front lines of medical discovery. Combining the historical atmosphere of The Alienist with an unconventional hero, Genius on the Edge celebrates one of history's most daring doctors. Book jacket.

Forgotten Science

Forgotten Science PDF Author: S. D. Tucker
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445648385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Was Jesus a giant electron? How much does a mouse’s soul weigh? Can women mate with monkeys? As mad as these questions may seem, they have been asked by science in years gone by. Forgotten Science unearths some of the most extraordinary attempts to understand the world around us.

Quackery

Quackery PDF Author: Lydia Kang
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
ISBN: 1523501855
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. 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. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

The WEIRDest People in the World

The WEIRDest People in the World PDF Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710457
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.

Medical Muses

Medical Muses PDF Author: Asti Hustvedt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408822350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
In 1862 the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris became the epicenter of the study of hysteria, the mysterious illness then thought to affect half of all women. There, prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot's contentious methods caused furore within the church and divided the medical community. Treatments included hypnosis, piercing and the evocation of demons and, despite the controversy they caused, the experiments became a fascinating and fashionable public spectacle. Medical Muses tells the stories of the women institutionalised in the Salpêtrière. Theirs is a tale of science and ideology, medicine and the occult, of hypnotism, sadism, love and theatre. Combining hospital records, municipal archives, memoirs and letters, Medical Muses sheds new light on a crucial moment in psychiatric history.

Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar

Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar PDF Author: David Haviland
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101478209
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The next book in the strange and fascinating series that began with the national bestseller Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers & Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body. The national bestseller Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers & Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body uncovered everything one might want to know (and a few things one might not) about the human body. The follow-up bestseller Why Fish Fart & Other Useless or Gross Information About the World contained an artful selection of odd and/or unsavory facts about the world. Why Dogs Eat Poop scoured the animal kingdom for gross and or off-color facts about animals. In this delightfully disgusting new book in the series, David Haviland plumbs the world of medicine to uncover the answers to such vitally important questions as: *What exactly is urine therapy? *Is it safe to fly with breast implants? *How did a nine-and-a-half-inch spatula find its way into a surgery patient's body? *Why do some boxers drink their own pee? *What is cyclic vomiting syndrome and how can one avoid it? Any fan of the absurd and/or obscure is sure to delight in this strange (and slightly stomach-turning) book.