Medical Curiosities & Mistakes

by Robert M. Youngson

Medical stories from the horrifying to the hilarious illuminated by a lifetime of experience in clinical medicine and surgery.
Laced with a delicate (and occasionally indelicate) humour, this book is for anyone with a taste for the bizarre, the exotic and the preposterous. It is also a rich source of fascinating scientific lore and medical information.

Genres: Nonfiction, Medicine, History, Health

371 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[Shannon]

While a number of the stories in this text were factual and fascinating, the majoity were either A. Seemingly based on historical accounts with no way to verify B. More supernatural/metaphysical than medical or C. Really not that curious at all--rather bland to be honest. (Review to be contined...)

[Lynda]

WARNING: This book is not for the queasy.

Told as a collection of anecdotes, this is a fascinating book.

[Mel]

weird stories from all aspects of the medical world, Interesting and sometimes shocking.

[Luna]

Many of the vignettes are interesting although the author can come off as preachy at times. Although there is a list of sources at the end of the book no attempts were made to link stories with source material. This all but defeats the point of having sources... A few inaccuracies were observed, such as attributing HeLa cells to a Helen Baker but there were not many. Despite missing out on the opportunity of being a great read (utilization of a real endnote or footnote schema would help) overall it was not a bad read.

[Amie M]

This was too simplistic for my taste. Somewhat interesting, but not great.

[angela]

rather dull