New for 2020! Join the 750,000 listeners of the Sawbones Podcast as Dr Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin humorously discuss centuries of medical myths, mishaps and mayhem, including modern day medicine and pandemics.

Newly revised and updated for 2020, this new Paperback edition of the bestselling Sawbones Book gives you a fascinating, horrifying, funny and memorable tour through centuries of medical experimentation and practice (and sometimes malpractice). Learn about trepanation, the COVID-19 pandemic, Norovirus, Chickenpox, Diabetes, and more, all inspired by Sawbones 300+ podcast episodes.

Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not! But for thousands of years, people have done things like this—and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare . . . and some of the terrifying detours along the way.

Every week, Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin amaze, amuse, and gross out (depending on the week) hundreds of thousands of avid listeners to their podcast, Sawbones. Consistently rated a top podcast on iTunes, with over 15 million total downloads, this rollicking journey through thousands of years of medical mishaps and miracles is not only hilarious but downright educational. While you may never even consider applying  boiled weasel to your forehead (once the height of sophistication when it came to headache cures), you will almost certainly face some questionable medical advice in your everyday life (we’re looking at you, raw water!) and be better able to figure out if this is a miracle cure (it’s not) or a scam.

Table of Contents:

Part 1: The Contagious

Quarantine

The Deadly Parade

Detox

The Black Plague

Pliny the Elder

The Man Who Drank Poop

Parrot Fever

Part II: The Unnvering

The Resurrection Men

Opium

An Electrifying Experience

Weight Loss

Charcoal

Erectile Dysfunction

Spontaneous Combustion

Trepanation

The Doctor Is In

Part III: The Gross

Mummy Medicine

Mercury

The Guthole Bromance

A Piece of Your Mind

The Unkillable Phineas Gage

Phrenology

Robert Liston

Urine Luck!

Radium

Humorism

The Straight Poop

The Doctor Is In

Part IV: The Weird

The Dancing Plague

Curtis Howe Springer

Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em

A Titanic Case of Nausea

Arsenic

Paracelsus

Honey

Self-Experimentation

Homeopathy

The Doctor Is In

Part V: The Awesome

The Poison Squad

Bloodletting

Death by Chocolate

John Harvey Kellogg

Vinegar

Polio Vaccine

The Doctor Is In