Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine

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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siobhanward's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

3.0

This was a solid read. Not the best collection of miscellaney/curiosities that I've ever read but not the worst. Way too many detailed stories about people shoving various things into their bodies' orifices...

Anyway, points to Morris for finding lots of interesting stories I'd never heard before. Lots of weird stories, interesting stories and disgusting stories. Definitely a fun read if you're into the history of medicine, or honestly just weird medical tales.

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emory's review against another edition

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challenging funny lighthearted fast-paced

4.75

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nonbinarian_librarian's review against another edition

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dark funny informative fast-paced

4.0

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mentallyfishinggg's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

a fun collection of weird bits from old medical journals, etc. best read a little bit at a time so it doesn't get boring to work through.
i found it to be well-researched (apart from inaccurate information om corsetry) and a fun read.

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kk_bonton's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

3.75

An interesting collection of tales from medical journals

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bluejayreads's review

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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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