Publisher Description

Covered here are more than 500 of medicines brilliant achievements, crashing failures, and bizarre oddities, from prehistoric healers to 21st-century HMOs. This compilation of humorous episodes in the history of medicine includes entries such as: ancient Egyptian surgeons put their patients under by hitting them on the head with a mallet; at a Tokyo hospital, 30 percent of patients with throat polyps claimed karaoke was the cause; in the era of bloodletting, George Washingtons doctors turned a mild complaint into a full-blown medical crisis by bleeding their famous patient over and over until he eventually died (the story behind the books title).

Author Biography

Barrett is working on her PhD at the Courtauld Institute in London.

Details