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 kids—and surgical tools—then 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.

Discover the astonishing and peculiar history of medicine with this perfect gift for history buffs, doctors, and anyone looking to be amazed by the brilliant and bizarre ideas that shaped the world of medicine as we know it. From the use of electric eels in ancient Egypt to medieval dentists burning candles to combat invisible worms, this book uncovers the weirdest medical practices throughout history, highlighting the most dubious ideas, strangest treatments, and biggest blunders. Entertaining, shocking, and sometimes stomach-turning, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward. Did you know: • Renaissance physicians timed surgical procedures according to the position of the stars? • Blood from beheadings was believed to cure epilepsy? • Dr. Walter Freeman, the world’s foremost practitioner of lobotomies, practiced his craft while traveling on family camping trips, 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.

LGBT Mystery Maxwell Thornton isn’t really a people person, but that never mattered to him because he’d lived for his career. After losing a patient during a routine hysterectomy, he’s shaken and afraid to pick up the scalpel again. He resigns his position in the city and takes a job as sole GP in the isolated town of Rainy Dale, Texas, population 1001. Rainy Dale is populated with eccentrics who test his patience and seem to think he’s not only there to treat their illnesses, but that he’s also there to hold their hand and be their therapist. When one of his most annoying patients ends up dead and floating in Maxwell’s pool, he has some explaining to do to the local sheriff. Sheriff Royce Callum is intelligent, determined and more attracted to the new doctor than he would like. He can’t imagine Maxwell is a murderer, but he also can’t exactly ignore a corpse in the sexy doctor’s pool.

It's easy to take a pill when we aren't feeling well. But did you know that the art of making medicines goes back thousands of years? Early remedies weren't always so easy—or effective. Some seemed downright disgusting. Wine infused with a venomous snake was used to cure fatigue and hair loss. Snail slime soothed burns, and a mixture of ear wax and mud treated headaches. Discover more about how medicine was practiced centuries ago and how, eventually, scientists discovered some truly amazing remedies, from the magic bullet that treated syphilis to the insulin used for diabetes.

Take a look at the world's weirdest cures--from snake oil to maggots. These stories are too strange to be made up! Written with a high interest level to appeal to a more mature audience and a lower level of complexity with clear visuals to help struggling readers along. Considerate text includes tons of fascinating information and wild facts that will hold the readers' interest, allowing for successful mastery and comprehension. A table of contents, glossary with simplified pronunciations, and index all enhance comprehension.

These scripts will give students the opportunity to confidently practise language in a safe and structured setting where they can enjoy playing roles and bringing the story to life. ... they’ll be having so much fun that they won’t even realise that they are learning! —David Farmer, NILE training consultant, theatre director, and author Strange Medicine is an original short play about a mysterious scientist doing secretive research while renting a guesthouse from a family. The engaging, suspenseful play hits on an important theme: how is truth decided in science? This play was written for English students to improve their communication and speaking skills. As students read, practice, and perform these plays, they will learn cultural contexts, conversational moves, intonation and body language, high frequency lexical phrases, and grammar patterns Short enough for a project in a speaking class, but expandable to fill a whole elective class, drama unit, or theater club production,Strange Medicine makes drama in the classroom a good thing! In addition to the script, this book contains Preview activities, Pragmatics lesson on changing the subject, Advice on producing a play, Pronunciation tips, Glossary of theater vocabulary.

In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra and anemia; proposed it as a means to reanimate seemingly dead soldiers on the battlefield. It was a contested therapy because it meant crossing boundaries and challenging taboos. Was the transfusion of lamb blood into desperately sick humans really defensible? The book takes the reader on a journey into hospital wards and lunatic asylums, physiological laboratories and 19th century wars. It presents a fascinating story of medical knowledge, ambitions and concerns - a story that provides lessons for current debates on the morality of medical experimentation and care.

Long ago, curiosities were arranged in cabinets for display: a dried mermaid might be next to a giant's shinbone, the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In ten essays, Jan Bondeson brings a physician's diagnostic skills to various unexpected, gruesome, and extraordinary aspects of the history of medicine: spontaneous human combustion, colonies of snakes and frogs living in a person's stomach, kings and emperors devoured by lice, vicious tribes of tailed men, and the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal. Bondeson tells the story of Mary Toft, who gained notoriety in 1726 when she allegedly gave birth to seventeen rabbits. King George I, the Prince of Wales, and the court physicians attributed these monstrous births to a "maternal impression" because Mary had longed for a meal of rabbit while pregnant. Bondeson explains that the fallacy of maternal impressions, conspicuous in the novels of Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, has ancient roots in Chinese and Babylonian manuscripts. Bondeson also presents the tragic case of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Indian woman with thick hair growing over her body and a massive overgrowth of the gums that gave her a simian or ape-like appearance. Called the Ape Woman, she was exhibited all over the world. After her death in 1860, Julia's husband, who had also been her impresario, had her body mummified and continued to exhibit it throughout Europe. Bondeson tracked the mummy down and managed to diagnose Julia Pastrana's condition as the result of a rare genetic syndrome.

Author of such major books as Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture, and the Moral Life, Allen Verhey has become one of today's most trusted Christian voices in contemporary ethics, including the moral challenges that new medical technologies pose to Christian faith and decision-making. With this new book Verhey brings the biblical tradition to bear on contemporary bioethical concerns. Drawing on an unmatched depth of insight in these two realms, Verhey explores how the Bible can illuminate and guide medical ethics. He argues that churches are called to think and speak clearly about bioethical concerns, and he lays out here the scriptural tools for them to do so. After firmly grounding Christian ethical discourse in Scripture, Verhey shows how the Bible can be applied to such pressing questions as suffering, genetic intervention, abortion, reproductive technologies, end-of-life care, physician-assisted suicide, and more. Filled with faith-based wisdom and apt illustrations of the moral dilemmas discussed, this book is a must-read for Christians grappling with the ethical dimensions of medicine today.

Front page headlines on the day Elvis Presley died showed the deep feelings so many had for the first and only "King" of Rock 'n Roll. His early death at a young age was a shock. Not even 24 hours had passed after his death before the controversies started around the cause of his death. Did he really die of a heart attack as stated by the county coroner, or was his death a drug over-dose? Heart or drugs; what actually killed him? What were Elvis Presley's health issues that plagued him during his short life? Why was he in so much pain? Why the early death? His full medical saga has only recently begun to be thoroughly examined. After all these years people still want to know what happened to the "King." Three years after his death, I served as the major expert defense witness for Elvis' doctor, Dr. George C. Nichopolous. The District Attorney of Shelby County originally wanted to charge him with murder/manslaughter for "intentionally prescribing to harm Elvis Presley," but the charges were changed to "prescribing without a legitimate medical purpose." The jury promptly acquitted him, but I was left with many questions about what exactly was physically wrong with Elvis. The question of "was it heart or was it drugs" remained unanswered. In the years since his death, medical research has advanced to the point that we have new insights regarding his underling health problems and untimely death. Many of the mysteries of Elvis' life and death, which I hope to unveil in this book, can now be answered. I am in the unique position of being the only physician in the country who still has Elvis' full medical records from the trial. With expertise in internal medicine, addiction, and pain medicine along with having personally known his physicians, I am in a unique position to help uncover his mysterious medical saga. My hope is to shed some light on his health issues, and hopefully, with the help of medical science and common sense, solve the mystery of what really happened to Elvis! Forest Tennant