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 what lengths society has gone in the search for health. (via Goodreads)

I received an eARC of Quackery from Netgalley, courtesy of Workman Publishing Company, in exchange for an honest review.

This book was delightfully horrifying. It’s like the book version of Oddities – snarky, ridiculous, and fantastic. The things that humanity has believed to be medicine in the past are astonishing and horrible, but Kang and Pederson made them interesting, and cracked jokes all the way through.