Thursday 30 June 2022

352. A Brief History of Bad Medicine: True Stories of Weird Medicine and Dangerous Doctors by Robert Youngston and Ian Schott

 

BOOK REVIEW: A Brief History of Bad Medicine - True Stories of Weird Medicine and Dangerous Doctors by Robert Youngston and Ian Schott

Many horror stories of treatments gone wrong and doctors running amok have made us shiver at the mere thought of clinics and hospitals. Wrong doses of medicine have been known to give serious side effects, or worse, death. If your existing fears weren't enough, this book will leave you shaking.

A doctor removes the normal, healthy side of a patient's brain instead of the malignant tumor. A man whose leg is scheduled for amputation wakes up to find his healthy leg removed. These examples are part of a history of medical disasters and embarassments as old as the profession itself.

In this book, the authors have written the definitive account of medical mishap in modern and not-so-modern times. From famous quacks to curious forms of sexual healing, the book reveals everything from shamefully dangerous doctors to human guinea pigs.

Treading a fine line between the comical and the tragic, the honest mistake and the intentional crime, this book proves, once and for all, that you can't always trust the people in white coats.

The most interesting parts of the book for me were about the human experiments by the Nazi doctors and the science of cryogenics (freezing people to revive them in the future). Scary to bits, it just goes to show how the medical mind used to work in the past. For medical students or those interested in medicine, this book is a must-read.

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