Book description
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…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Sawbones Book as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Sure, today, we have MRIs, replacement artificial joints (even entire limbs), and medicine cabinets filled with pharmaceuticals to cure our aches and sniffles. But such wasn’t always the case. To get here, doctors once advised our forebears to apply weasels to their foreheads to relieve headaches and wear radioactive underpants to increase virility. And that’s just for starters.
I love books that shed light on the weird and winding path that led us to the present—and this one sits at the top of my list because the history is told with insight (one of the authors is a medical doctor)…
From Richard's list on The best books to make you laugh while you learn.
If you love The Sawbones Book...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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