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

Journey back to a time when doctors tried to jolt your paralyzed muscles awake with a strychnine-laced enema. When a physician wrote you a prescription for the mercury-based “Thunderclapper” pill to relieve your constipation. When surgeons promised to improve your virility with goat-testicle implants. A tour of medicine’s most outlandish misfires, Quackery dives into 67 “treatments,” exploring their various uses and why they thankfully fell out of favor―some more recently than you might think. Looking back in horror, and with a dash of dark humor, the book provides readers with an illuminating lesson in how medicine is very much an evolving process of trial and error, and how the doctor doesn’t always know best.

Medicina e Saúde / Não-ficção