"Delightfully horrifying."--Popular Science
One of Mental Floss''s Best Books of 2018
One of Science Friday''s Best Science Books of 2018
- A mysterious epidemic of dental explosions-
- A teenage boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestick...
- A remarkable woman who, like a human fountain, spurted urine from virtually every orifice...
These are just a few of the anecdotal gems that have until now lain undiscovered in medical journals for centuries. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.
From seventeenth-century Holland to Tsarist Russia, from rural Canada to a whaler in the Pacific, many are monuments to human stupidity - such as the sailor who swallowed dozens of penknives to amuse his shipmates, or the chemistry student who in 1850 arrived at a hospital in New York with his penis trapped inside a bottle, having
