Free shipping on orders over $99
Sawbones

Sawbones

The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine

by Justin McElroy and Dr. Sydnee McElroy
Paperback
Publication Date: 09/10/2018

Share This Book:

 
A compelling, often hilarious and occasionally horrifying exploration of how modern medicine came to be! 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.

Table of Contents:

Part 1: 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

Part 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

Part III: The Weird
The Dancing Plague
Curtis Howe Springer
Smoke 'Em if You Got eEm
A Titanic Case of Nausea
Arsenic
Paracelsus
Honey
Self-Experimentation
Homeopathy
The Doctor Is In

Part IV: The Awesome
The Poison Squad
Bloodletting
Death by Chocolate
John Harvey Kellogg
Parrot Fever
Detox
Vinegar
Polio Vaccine
The Doctor Is In
ISBN:
9781681883816
9781681883816
Category:
Science: general issues
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
09-10-2018
Publisher:
Weldon Owen, Incorporated
Country of origin:
United States
Pages:
224
Dimensions (mm):
216x171x0mm
Justin McElroy

Justin McElroy is a 15-year journalism veteran with two awards from the Ohio Associated Press for business writing.

He has served as the managing editor of AOL’s Joystiq and Vox Media’s Polygon (of which he’s also a founder).

Click 'Notify Me' to get an email alert when this item becomes available

Reviews

Be the first to review Sawbones.