Quackery

I'm waffling hard on my rating of this book. It's a very generous 4 stars, more like a 3.5 if I were being honest.

Divided into sections covering different aspects of medical history, this book covers a huge range of ground on the craziest things used as medicine over the course of history. There's no FDA regulating anything here, just unadulterated ingestion of heavy metals, literal snake oils, and poisons, the leeching, lobotomizing, and burning of the human body, and so many different ways to torture--I mean, cure, what ails you. It's a chilling walk down the road that got us to today's realm of regulated antibiotics, medicines, sanitization, and sterile medical procedures.

While all of this was really interesting to me in the beginning, the book covers so much ground that you'll get a deep dive on some things and then other, equally interesting sounding things get glossed over. Additionally, the author uses humor to keep things light (because, really, the book would be incredibly depressing without it), but I thought it was forced, stretched, and otherwise cringe-inducing in some places.

A super interesting book if you're looking for a litany of medical history factoids, maybe pass on it if you're looking for detailed information though. Or use it as a jumping off point to other things, like I probably am. Also, if you're squeamish or otherwise don't want to read about genitalia problems or cures, maybe give this a pass.

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 Osiris that mine"