A Sick History of Medicine
It is a truth universally acknowledged, and best exemplified with Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories, that an ideal way to get young people excited about the past is to focus on the gross-out humour angle, and then to slide in engaging facts and context along the way. In this gorgeously illustrated book we’re exploring the history of medicine, looking at how healers across the world and across the ages have dealt with diseases, sanitation, and ideas about the human body.
The approachable text, penned by a physician with a passion for the history of her discipline, works through the wide range of material topic by topic – e.g. plagues, the development of sanitation systems, vaccines – allowing readers to dip in and out, rather than taking a strict linear approach. Topics like childbirth and mental health are explored with sensitivity and in an age-appropriate manner, and cartoon images are often leveraged for humour – ‘are you sure this works?’ a frizzy-haired individual trying out an ‘electric bath’ wonders.
One might hope in some places for more commentary – for example, the healing ‘royal touch’ of medieval Europe was lent credence because it was associated with an illness that tended to naturally improve on its own, and we tend to conflate correlation with causation – but in others there is a clear assessment made of outdated ideas. The Victorian fondness for ‘phrenology,’ or assessing people’s characters by their faces, is put in its place: ‘We now know that this was bad science, or pseudoscience.’ Yes, quite!
Classic gruesome non-fiction for readers aged eight years and up.
