Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything book cover

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

344 pages
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Published: 17 Oct 2017
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Editions
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Details

This edition

ISBN: 9780761189817

Format: Hardcover

Language: English

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

Publication date: 17 October 2017

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Description

Discover 67 shocking-but-true medical misfires that run the gamut from bizarre to deadly. Like when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When snorting skull moss was a cure for a bloody nose. When consuming mail-order tapeworms was a latter-day fad diet. Or when snake oil salesmen peddled strychnine (used in rat poison) as an aphrodisiac in the '60s. Seamlessly combining macabre humor with hard science and compelling storytelling, Quackery is a visually rich and information-packed exploration of history's most outlandish cures, experiments, and scams.

A humorous book that delves into some of the wacky but true ways that humans have looked to cure their ills. Leeches, mercury, strychnine, and lobotomies are a few of the topics that explore the lengths society has gone in the search for health.