Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris

4 reviews

blackcatkai's review against another edition

informative tense slow-paced

3.0

CW: medical content, illness, suicide attempt, blood & other bodily fluids, war & guns mentioned, gun violence, self mutilation, sexual content, injury details, gross things, trauma, mental illness, pregnancy

well the best parts were definitely towards the beginning, everything was pretty interesting overall. there were some ones that really make you squirm and go 'ew wtf' and I'd dare say even more so than some horror novels simply because a lot of these are real events. not all, necessarily, but most.

Thomas does a pretty good job collecting all the stories into different sections while putting his own jokes & commentary in between. there's even footnotes to explain some meanings as you go. I wish the intensity of the early stories continued throughout, but the pace is definitely up and down and not super consistent due to the best being at the start.

basically I liked this enough and I'm relatively glad I read it. gross, though.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Mental illness, Medical content, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Self harm, Animal death, Gore, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Alcohol, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual content, and Vomit

Minor: War, Ableism, Gun violence, and Pregnancy

emory's review against another edition

challenging funny lighthearted fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Alcohol, Blood, Cancer, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Death of parent, Excrement, Gore, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Pregnancy, and Violence

kk_bonton's review against another edition

funny informative medium-paced

3.75

An interesting collection of tales from medical journals

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Blood, Chronic illness, Alcohol, Vomit, Animal death, Child death, and Excrement

bluejayreads's review

I love reading "doctors of Reddit" threads, because for some reason I enjoy reading about all the injuries humans can survive and all the horrible things that can go wrong in our bodies. I picked this up because it sounded like it would be similar, except in book for and taken from historical cases. 

And for the first 60%, that's really what it was. The author is a medical historian, so he introduced, periodically interrupted, and concluded the accounts from historical medical journals with his own commentary explaining the origins and effects of the historical treatments, providing potential diagnoses in some cases, and comparing with how something similar might be treated in the modern day.

The main problem is that, like a "doctors of Reddit" thread, you can only consume it for so many hours before you get tired of the subject. This would be a great book to peruse occasionally instead of reading straight through - get your dose of the fascinating medical stuff and then put it back on your shelf until you get the craving again. I checked this book out from the library, though, and deadlines mean I'm not really able to do that. So, unfortunately, this book goes in the Did Not Finish pile. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Blood, and Gore