Strange Medicine

May 13, 2013
Belofsky (The Book of Strange and Curious Legal Oddities) conjures horror and hilarity—sometimes at the same time—in this cheeky history of 2,400 years of doctors doing “more harm than good” and occasionally fumbling their way toward “Eureka!” Readers will be surprised to learn that some very important medical discoveries were near misses. Dr. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, for example, lay moldering for a decade before scientists developed it into a lifesaving antibiotic. Of course, there are plenty of medical adventures that, alas, failed to advance knowledge of the subject: one medieval physician prescribed swaddling torture victims in the skin of a “newly killed animal.” His most sage counsel? “If he is dead... do not attempt to treat.” Belofsky notes, however, that medicine sunk to its lowest point during its “Heroic Era.” In the late 1700s, Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry, would strap patients to chairs, hang them from the ceiling, and spin them “like tops for hours on end.” Modern medics weren’t much kinder. In 1946, Dr. Walter Freeman introduced lobotomies, using ice picks from his kitchen to perform the procedure, and packing up the wife, kids, and picks for summer tours of national parks while he did surgeries at local hospitals. Makes a shot in the rear seem like a walk in the park with Dr. Walt. Agent: Janet Rosen, Sheree Bykofsky Associates Inc.

July 1, 2013
For a very long time, medical professionals often did more damage than healing. Quackery abounded. Preying on the desperation and gullibility of the sick, arrogant and ignorant medical practitioners recommended wacky remedies and foisted harmful procedures on patients. As recently as the 1800s, physicians were medical wrecking balls, inflicting on the sick therapies as extreme as bloodletting, purging, and blistering. Belofsky offers a brief, unnerving, and fascinating romp through medical history, from Babylonia to ancient Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, medieval times, the Renaissance, and nineteenth-century America. He includes anecdotes and summaries of outlandish treatments along with quotes by and about healers. A sampling of the strangeness includes medical astrology, balancing the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile), the use of urine as a health elixir, bloodletting to the point of exsanguination, and tongue mapping. Readers learn that Louis XIV endured more than 2,000 enemas in his lifetime and that Pope John XXI imbibed urine faithfully. Strange Medicine depicts doctors who were frequently ferocious and relentless but only occasionally inventive and ingenious.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)