A review by hannahstohelit
The Incurable Wound by Berton Roueché

Another great collection- had read a bunch of them before but they were good ones. One cool thing about these collections is the ability to read about the creation of currently seemingly foundational things before they were foundational, such as poison control- and while the aspirin article (which was in Medical Detectives) was great, the second one behind the scenes at NYC poison control was even more interesting in terms of giving background on how people looked at it as a brand new concept. 

The first and last essays being psychiatric/psychological was fascinating. The first one reminded me of Agatha Christie's fugue state, and I find it interesting that, except for the title, there isn't really an attempt to actually diagnose him, leaving (IMO) the door open to wonder if he was faking. The last one was fascinating- besides for learning about the discovery and early use of steroids, the steroid-induced bipolar psychosis was vividly and viscerally depicted and a great depiction of something that I feel like you don't see a whole lot in the media. A relative who works in inpatient psychiatry did tell me that steroid-induced psychosis is something she's seen, though more often in children than adults, but while "roid rage" is a phrase I'd randomly heard of before, I had no context for it and had certainly never heard of anything described like this..