Sawbones Book

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 Paperback edition of the bestselling Sawbones Book offers 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 cure your ills? Tempted by vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with 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 break down 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 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 I: The Contagious

• Quarantine
• The Deadly Parade
• Detox
• The Black Plague
• Pliny the Elder
• The Man Who Drank Poop
• Parrot Fever

Part II: The Unnerving

• 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