Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages

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. From bad science and oafish behavior to stomach-turning procedures that hurt more than helped, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward: The ancient Egyptians applied electric eels to cure gout. 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 kidsand surgical toolsthen 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. Nathan Belofsky is the author of The Book of Strange and Curious Legal Oddities, which has been featured in the New Yorker and on Salon. He lives in Manhattan.