About this item
What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious "treatments" - conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil) - that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.
About the Author
I love salt more than chocolate. I'm somewhat small, yet deceptively strong. Sort of like an ant. I'm a part time doc, full time family member, and if you offer me snacks, I'll be a friend for life. My adult fiction debut is an historical forensic mystery, entitled A BEAUTIFUL POISON, coming August 2017 from Lake Union Publishing. I have a nonfiction adult book written with Nate Pederson entitled QUACKERY: A Short History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, coming in 2017 (Workman) .And also. ..a new YA novel, THE NOVEMBER GIRL. Set on a remote island on Lake Superior, a girl with violence running through her veins meets a boy running away from an abusive home life. (Entangled Teen, 2017) Finally, announcing CYCLO, a space opera about a created, teen girl who's abandoned on a biological spaceship, and the mercenary boy doomed to die on it. (Entangled Teen, 2018) My YA sci-fi novel, CONTROL, debuted December 2013 (Dial/Penguin) . The sequel, CATALYST, released March 2015 (Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin) . I released a short story in the dark YA anthology, AMONG THE SHADOWS October 2015.
