Medieval Medicine
My special guest tonight is author Nathan Belofsky who's here to enlighten you about the unbelievable medical practices used in the past.
If you want to enjoy recent episodes of Mysterious Radio just search for the show in your favorite podcast app...
My special guest tonight is author Nathan Belofsky who's here to enlighten you about the unbelievable medical practices used in the past.
If you want to enjoy recent episodes of Mysterious Radio just search for the show in your favorite podcast app and make sure you to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode!
Now published in five languages, 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.
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At that time, it was customary to mistreat mental patients, just to treat them like animals. And he was a very enlightened voice in that respect.
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He was one of the first doctors to say, no, we need to treat our patients, our mental patients well. He would bring them fruitcakes. He would invite them to his house for dinner.
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But he also did some very, very bizarre things. Trying to get the blood moving in their brains, he would burn them with acid. He would shock them with electricity.
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