Title: Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
Author: Lydia Kang & Nate Pedersen
Genre: Adult, nonfiction, science
Publication date: October 2017
Published by: Workman Publishing Company
Source: Borrowed ebook from library
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Synopsis: Discover 67 shocking-but-true medical misfires that run the gamut from bizarre to deadly. Like when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When snorting skull moss was a cure for a bloody nose. When consuming mail-order tapeworms was a latter-day fad diet. Or when snake oil salesmen peddled strychnine (used in rat poison) as an aphrodisiac in the '60s. Seamlessly combining macabre humor with hard science and compelling storytelling, Quackery is a visually rich and information-packed exploration of history's most outlandish cures, experiments, and scams.A humorous book that delves into some of the wacky but true ways that humans have looked to cure their ills. Leeches, mercury, strychnine, and lobotomies are a few of the topics that explore the lengths society has gone in the search for health.
I've been slowly getting into nonfiction these last two years, and this book was one of the few books that caught my attention. I'm a nurse, so this topic was very interesting to me. But honestly, anyone could read it! It was easy to read and just so much fun! The book was sassy from the start and I loved it! Plus, it was just really interesting and informative.
The book was divided into sections, each one focusing on elements, plants and soil, tools, animals, and mysterious powers that were used to cure illnesses back in the day. It was absolutely wild the things they would use and thought was totally okay to do. Mercury and antimony, for example, were two elements they would use to cure anything and everything. It was insane!
You were purging from one end or another, and people thought it was a good thing! Purging was real big back in the day because they thought that's how you got rid of the toxins that were making you ill. Little did they know they were actually poisoning themselves.
In the plants section, they talked about things like how the Bayer company (yeah, the one who’s big into aspirin these days) used to push heroin and other terrible drugs to cure things...
And how Coca-Cola was created in response to wanting a non-opiate painkiller and an alternative to a cocaine-laced French wine (and if you didn't know Coke had actual, well, coke in it back in the day, now you do lol).
Oh, and if you were unlucky enough to drown in a body of water and were pulled out, you wouldn't be given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! No, that was way too vulgar. Instead, you would be given tobacco smoke enemas! 🙃
And don't even get me started on bloodletting... Like I said, they were big into purging of all kinds, even purposefully bleeding people out. Guys, they literally treated hemorrhages with bloodletting! 😂 Make it make sense!
It also talked about lobotomies (which were horrible!), and how tapeworms were advertised for weight loss and claimed that they had no ill effects or danger!
(Don't actually buy it lol). And omg, radio waves? Really? I still cannot wrap my head around that one 😂
The things they did throughout history to cure ailments were insane. But then again, the "science" they went off of was also wild. One thing that kept popping up over and over was the humoral theory, which was an absolute joke. Something about having four humors and them getting out of whack and therefore making you sick. Nowadays, this sounds absolutely ridiculous. But with knowing so little about actual physiology back in the day, I can see how this would’ve made sense. (It was still crazy though lol).
And one thing that really cracked me up was the wandering womb bit. Anything wrong with a woman... probably the womb. And let's call her hysterical while we're at it! 🙃
But I loved this book! It genuinely made me laugh—I literally laughed out loud so many times! Plus, it was very engaging, easy to read, and just really interesting! I really liked how the book would talk about these so-called cures and then go into whether they're still being used today, and if so, how. It was very intriguing stuff. And I just really appreciated all the images, ads, articles, and old pictures that were included. I definitely recommend this book!
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