How to Cure the Plague & Other Curious Remedies PDF Download

Author: Julian Walker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780712357012
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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"This new book presents a fascinating illustrated compilation of some of the most curious and disturbing cures from history, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century." --Book jacket.

Author: Nigel Cawthorne
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 034942134X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Did you know that a child can be cured of the whooping cough by passing it under the belly of a donkey? The history of medicine in Britain is filled with the most bizarre and gruesome cures for many common ailments. Although enthusiastically supported by doctors of the time, many of these cures were often useless and often resulted in the death of the patient. But strange and alarming though many of the cures may seem, some of them did in fact work and provide the basis of much of the medicine we take for granted nowadays. The use of herbs by medieval monks was remarkably effective - and still is today. This highly entertaining and informative book will fascinate anyone who has ever wondered whether doctors really know what they are talking about - just don't try any of the cures mentioned at home! Or that weak eyes can be cured by the application of chicken dung - or alternatively be large draughts of beer taken in the morning? Or that the juice extracted from a bucketful of snails covered in brown sugar and hung over a basin overnight was once used to cure a sore throat?

Author: MEDICINE.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1

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Author: Lindsey Fitzharris
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1547606045
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Smallpox! Rabies! Black Death! Throughout history humankind has been plagued by . . . well, by plagues. The symptoms of these diseases were gruesome-but the remedies were even worse. Get to know the ickiest illnesses that have infected humans and affected civilizations through the ages. Each chapter explores the story of a disease, including the scary symptoms, kooky cures, and brilliant breakthroughs that it spawned. Medical historian and bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris lays out the facts with her trademark wit, and Adrian Teal adds humor with cartoons and caricatures drawn in pitch black and blood red. Diseases covered in this book include bubonic plague, smallpox, rabies, tuberculosis, cholera, and scurvy. Thanks to centuries of sickness and a host of history's most determined plague-busters, this riveting book features everything you've ever wanted to know about the world's deadliest diseases.

Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393324826
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.

Author: Ann Benson
Publisher: Dell
ISBN: 0307778118
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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“Part historical novel, part futuristic adventure . . . chock full of curious lore and considerable suspense.”—Entertainment Weekly It is history's most feared disease. It turned neighbor against neighbor, the civilized into the savage, and the living into the dead. Now, in a spellbinding novel of adventure and science, romance and terror, two eras are joined by a single trace of microscopic bacterium—the invisible seeds of a new bubonic plague. In the year 1348, a disgraced Spanish physician crosses a landscape of horrors to Avignon, France. There, he will be sent on an impossible mission to England, to save the royal family from the Black Death. . . . Nearly seven hundred years later, a woman scientist digs up a clod of earth in London. In a world where medicine is tightly controlled, she will unearth a terror lying dormant for centuries. From the primitive cures of the Middle Ages to the biological police state of our near future, The Plague Tales is a thrilling race against time and mass destruction. For in 2005, humankind's last hope for survival can come only from one place: out of a dark and tortured past. Praise for The Plague Tales “Benson reveals a formidable talent as she blends historical fiction with a near-future bio-thriller.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Harrowing . . . Will give readers both nightmares and thrills . . . A carefully woven page-turner from which . . . Robin Cook and Michael Crichton could learn.”—Library Journal “A hard-to-put-down thriller steeped in historical fiction and bio-tech sci-fi.”—Middlesex News (Mass.)

Author: William Rosen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698184106
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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The epic history of how antibiotics were born, saving millions of lives and creating a vast new industry known as Big Pharma. As late as the 1930s, virtually no drug intended for sickness did any good; doctors could set bones, deliver babies, and offer palliative care. That all changed in less than a generation with the discovery and development of a new category of medicine known as antibiotics. By 1955, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes had been transformed, trivializing once-deadly infections. William Rosen captures this revolution with all its false starts, lucky surprises, and eccentric characters. He explains why, given the complex nature of bacteria—and their ability to rapidly evolve into new forms—the only way to locate and test potential antibiotic strains is by large-scale, systematic, trial-and-error experimentation. Organizing that research needs large, well-funded organizations and businesses, and so our entire scientific-industrial complex, built around the pharmaceutical company, was born. Timely, engrossing, and eye-opening, Miracle Cure is a must-read science narrative—a drama of enormous range, combining science, technology, politics, and economics to illuminate the reasons behind one of the most dramatic changes in humanity’s relationship with nature since the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago.

Author: Rebecca Skloot
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307589382
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE • ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS • WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Financial Times • New York • Independent (U.K.) • Times (U.K.) • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Author: Lydia Kang
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
ISBN: 1523501855
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison—was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

Author: Orhan Pamuk
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9354927521
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 801

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It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria-the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire-located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives-brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria-the island revolts. To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island-an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs. As the plague continues its rapid spread, the Sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island's governor and local administration and the people's refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the Sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves. Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel remarkably contemporary.