The Sawbones Book

Justin Mcelroy, Sydnee Mcelroy

Description

Every week, Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin amaze, amuse, and gross out (depending on the week) hundreds of thousands of avid listeners to their podcast, Sawbones. Consistently rated a top podcast on iTunes, with over 15 million total downloads, this rollicking journey through thousands of years of medical mishaps and miracles is not only hilarious but downright educational. While you may never even consider applying boiled weasel to your forehead (once the height of sophistication when it came to headache cures), you will almost certainly face some questionable medical advice in your everyday life (we’re looking at you, raw water!) and be better able to figure out if this is a miracle cure (it’s not) or a scam.

Sujets

• Sci Fi
• Best sellers
• The Moth
• Spook
• John Hodgman
• Stiff
• Scifi
• Dan Savage
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
• Quackery
• The New York Times Best Seller list
• Non-fiction
• History of medicine
• Doctor Who

Informations

• Publié par: Weldon Owen
• Date de parution: 09 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781681885131
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Written by Dr. Sydnee McElroy
and Justin McElroy
Illustrated by Teylor Smirl

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
Introduction
Part I: T HE U NNERVING
The Resurrection Men
Opium
An Electrifying Experience
Weight Loss
Charcoal
The Black Plague
Pliny the Elder
Erectile Dysfunction
Spontaneous Combustion
The Doctor Is In
Trepanation
Part II: T HE G ROSS
Mummy Medicine
Mercury
The Guthole Bromance
A Piece of Your Mind
The Unkillable Phineas Gage
Phrenology
The Man Who Drank Poop
Robert Liston
Urine Luck!
Radium
Humorism
The Doctor Is In
The Straight Poop
Part III: T HE W EIRD
The Dancing Plague
Curtis Howe Springer
Smoke Em if You Got Em
A Titanic Case of Nausea
Arsenic
Paracelsus
Honey
Self-Experimentation
Homeopathy
The Doctor Is In
Part IV: T HE A WESOME
The Poison Squad
Bloodletting
Death by Chocolate
John Harvey Kellogg
Parrot Fever
Detox
Vinegar
Polio Vaccine
The Doctor Is In

This is a book about medical history and nothing we say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It s for fun. Can t you just have fun for once and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you ve earned it. Just sit back, relax, and let this book distract you from that . . . weird growth. You re worth it.
For Charlie and Cooper, thanks for sleeping sometimes so we could write this.
We started Sawbones so we could stop watching so much TV.
After Losing the Sheen (a Two and a Half Men review show by two people who didn t watch until Charlie Sheen left the show) and Satellite Dish (a much more general and dare-we-say palatable TV review podcast) we just couldn t keep up with all the requisite screen time.
Sydnee has loved weird medical history since before she was a physician and Justin loves talking to Sydnee. A show that detailed humanity s absolutely ramshackle history of trying to fix itself over the millennia just made sense. One 45-minute brainstorming session at Black Sheep Burritos and Brews later, Sawbones was born.
We ve never been the same.
Since we launched it in 2013, Sawbones has provided us with a surrogate family of medical history nerds who are just as passionate about science education as we are. After our daughter Charlie s frightening birth experience (she s fine now!) Sawbones was the place we wanted to share our story. We ve received so many beautiful cards and letters from a new generation of physicians and scientists it has in some small way inspired. It s way more than a podcast to us.
We mean that literally too. We always thought Sawbones had the potential to reach new people with a book, we just had no idea how to make it happen. Considering that we treat podcasting as a family business, it should have come as no surprise that Sydnee s sister and incredibly gifted illustrator Teylor Smirl would provide a big part of the answer.
If you are a listener, the tales that follow may seem familiar. We started with some of our favorite episodes and dove deeper, expanding them into beautifully illustrated stories. Medical history has no shortage of ridiculous characters, misguided diagnoses, stomach-churning treatments and, occasionally, incredible miracles. Join us as we chronicle medicine s tortuous journey from complete ignorance to, well, something slightly more competent.
If you one of those listener who ve been braving our horrible tales since 2013: Thank you, this book would not exist without you. If you re a newcomer, blame those other guys for what you re about to endure.

-Justin and Sydnee McElroy
THE UNNERVING

There are dark corners of existence that some people spend their lives trying not to think about. Let s start the fun there!

Before things get too wretched, let s unsettle and squirm
We ll steal bodies for science before they re too firm
You ll be shocked back to life after being starved dead
We ve got poppies to take the edge off the dread
Stuff these herbs in your nose, the plague tends to stink
And then let s meet Pliny for an herb-and-pee drink
If higher awareness you re hoping to find
Don t puncture your noggin, we ll open your mind. -->
T HE R ESURRECTION M EN
The first riot in American history happened in Manhattan, and it happened because of dead bodies.

In the book biz, we call that a tease. We ll get there, we promise, but first you need to understand the perfectly respectable and not in any way creepy reasons that doctors are so desperate to cut up dead bodies-not to mention how people over history have felt about that completely reasonable desire.
A utopsies haven t always been so controversial. In fact, the ancient Egyptians performed what were essentially autopsies way back in 2600 BCE, although the practice at the time was more about the ritualistic entombing of organs than any kind of education or forensics. Egyptian embalmers were the original anatomists, carefully removing a variety of body parts to be preserved while leaving the heart, eyes, and tongue in place for religious reasons. The challenges of extracting all those organs (especially the really slippery ones) led to the development of better surgical tools. Physicians of the time benefitted from those tools as well as learning a fair amount of anatomy from the embalmers, as demonstrated in ancient writings such as the Ebers Papyrus, the Edwin-Smith Papyrus, and the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus.

Everyone, I d like you to meet my wife, who I suspect may be the only human on Earth that s this excited about these specific medical papyri. Admittedly, the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus is a very excellent name and worthy of highlighting. Gentle ribbing withdrawn.
Before you get too impressed, keep in mind these docs also performed pregnancy tests by putting an onion in the patient s vagina overnight, and thought that our arteries carried semen. So things weren t, you know, all sewn up, as it were. But still, an impressive start!
CLASSICAL CUT-UPS
In Ancient Greece, bodies were dissected without ritual, for purely scientific reasons. Erasistratus and Herophilus, who lived around 300 BCE, are known today as the fathers of modern dissection. They and a number of other physicians and students dissected corpses regularly and published texts and drawings based on their findings. (This was before printing presses, so let s spare a thought for the poor scribe who spent many icky afternoons copying their work.)
The practice wasn t considered legal in the strictest sense at the time, but it was apparently tolerated, and thus provided the Greeks with a better understanding of anatomy as well as an appreciation for the importance of autopsies in medical education.
In comparison, the Ancient Romans were strictly anti-autopsy-and by the time of Galen, the most prominent physician alive during the first century CE, dissections were made illegal. This meant that Galen and others had to base their know-how on primate anatomy . . . and the work of their Grecian predecessors. (If that last bit seems hypocritical to you, we have to assume this is the first account of human history you ve ever read and we re so flattered that you ve chosen our book to start with.) This reliance on secondhand information led to inevitable missteps and discord among physicians of the time, and for a millennium to follow.

Let this be a lesson kids: Always dissect your own corpses. You may think you can save a few bucks by looking over your buddy s shoulder, but trust me on this one. You ve gotta get your own scalpel in there and saw through the sinew yourse-you know what? Actually, I ve yucked myself out.
CAN I HAVE THAT WHEN YOU RE DONE WITH IT?
After a millennium or so of European physicians and scholars poking around with carcasses and arguing about old scrolls, things started to pick up right around the 13th century. History tells us that dissections were not only carried out by doctors, but actually condoned by the Catholic Church. That may seem weirdly progressive, but keep in mind the doctrine that the body exists only as a vessel for the soul-and once that soul vacates the premises, why shouldn t scientists get a crack at the abandoned home?
AUTOPSIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT
At this point, dear reader, we re sure you re getting excited to learn what corpse dissection was like during the never-ending Insane Clown Posse concert that was Middle Ages. We re thrilled to report The Rowdy Years did not disappoint, since that s when autopsies became a spectator sport. Literally. As in, they were conducted in public and tickets were sold. Oh Middle Ages, thank you as always.
Dissections continued as the Middle Ages waned, though they tended to be more private even occasionally secretive. For example, in the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci covertly dissected people as reference for his popular Vitruvian Man drawing (just when you thought that thing couldn t get creepier).
The Catholic Church even got in on the action every so often. In 1308, four nuns took it upon themselves to autopsy the recently deceased (and extremely holy) Sister Chiara of Montefalco, searching for signs of saintliness. According to the not in any way questionable amateur autopsy report, a crucifix was found in her heart, as well as three gallstones in her gallbladder which were thought to represent the Holy Trinity.
A couple centuries later they were still at it-in 1533, officials of the Church ordered the dissection of conjoined twins after their death, in order to determine if they shared a soul (in