Quackery

A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

By: Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

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. This book seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

©2017 Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen (P)2018 Tantor

Captivating

The narrator was the perfect choice for this book. She made the subject matter so enjoyable.

wonderful

easy to follow the narrator and interesting topic. Humerus ( hahaha ) and strangely cool.

Interesting and Entertaining

Very interesting subject matter, thorough with some low brow humor that made me chuckle often

Some things never change...

Although the book both amusing and enlightening, I do think that the distinction needs to me main tween outright quackery and really bad ideas that are firmly held and believed. Although, for instance, Pres. Washington was probably killed by bloodletting, is Dr. was firmly convinced that bloodletting was the healthiest, best thing for him! And it's really difficult to realize that there are aspects of medicine that we still loan know! We are discovering that some of the treatments that we use to consider ludicrous are actually useful in some situations (for instance, leeches and, yes, "bloodletting -although by a different name"…
But still, some of the amazingly, incredible practices that we justified for monetary gain were positively fantastic in their bizarreness! And although it's tempting to say that people brought in on themselves, things that we currently know to be bizarre and outlandish were not seen that way 100 years ago. Which of our current practices will be seen that way a hundred years hence?
But overall, it was a good book!

The rereading of this book reinforced my idea that there is a difference between true quackery and lack of knowledge, but it still points out the amount of true quackery that is rife in medicine and amongst those who truly desire to just make money! And it points out how long and ubiquitous some truly stupid ideas are. The idea that "a little of the thing is good CLEARLY implies that a lot is better" is easy to tout and doesn't appear to require research :-(. Fasting and cleanses are still promoted as beneficial if not necessary for humans, and we are fed a combination of "people were made perfectly to care for and heal themselves naturally" and "people must do amazingly complex things on a daily basis in order to realize their full potential
(review on GoodReads)

Great Public History for the Masses

Definitely a public history meant for the masses. All in all nice easy listening. Highly recommend for teen to adult audiences who love history and science.

Some parts. Water than others

Overall happy I read it but some of the parts got a little slow. Good book though

Amusing and Informative

A fun listen, if you're interested in medical history this is for you
The things humans do...

Fun and educational

From start to finish I loved hearing the stories and histories of old fable medicine. We’ve come a long way, thankfully.

not bad for it's demographic

I found it alright, although the humor was mediocre at best. There was also a hint of the author's political beliefs in here, though it felt out of place for the book this is. I would have preferred a more unbiased and factual alternative to this book, but for people who enjoy storytelling to compliment non-fiction this is a decent read.

I'm grateful to life in the modern world

More than any other book Quackery made me very thankful to be alive now and not at some point in the past. We can glamorize bygone eras, but the idea of having hemorrhoids burned off with a red-hot piece of metal is all you need to know to realize it's better to be alive now than it was then. Fantastic book - very entertaining and very informative.