"Delightfully horrifying."Popular ScienceOne of Mental Flosss Best Books of 2018One of Science Fridays Best Science Books of 2018 A mysterious epidemic of dental explosions A teenage boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestick... A remarkable woman who, like a human fountain, spurted urine from virtually every orifice...These are just a few of the anecdotal gems that have until now lain undiscovered in medical journals for centuries. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.From seventeenthcentury Holland to Tsarist Russia, from rural Canada to a whaler in the Pacific, many are monuments to human stupidity such as the sailor who swallowed dozens of penknives to amuse his shipmates, or the chemistry student who in 1850 arrived at a hospital in New York with his penis trapped inside a bottle, having unwisely decided to relieve himself into a vessel containing highly reactive potassium. Others demonstrate exceptional surgical ingenuity long before the advent of anaesthesia such as a daring nineteenthcentury operation to remove a metal fragment from beneath a conscious patients heart. We also hear of the weird, often hilarious remedies employed by physicians of yore from crows vomit to portwine enemas the hazards of such everyday objects as cucumbers and false teeth, and miraculous recovery from apparently terminal injuries.Blending fascinating history with lacerating wit, The...

Binding: Paperback;400 pages; Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd; Classification: BTH; Weight: 400 g; Dimensions: 199 x 130 x 25

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