The Sawbones Book

A compelling, often hilarious and occasionally horrifying exploration of how modern medicine came to be! Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those 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 breakdown 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 even 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 1: The Unnerving The Resurrection Men Opium An Electrifying Experience Weight Loss Charcoal The Black Plague Pliny the Elder Erectile Dysfunction Spontaneous Combustion The Doctor Is In Trepanation Part II: The Gross Mummy Medicine Mercury The Guthole Bromance A Piece of Your Mind The Unkillable Phineas Gage Phrenology The Man Who Drank Poop Robert Liston Urine Luck! Radium Humorism The Doctor Is In The Straight Poop Part III: The Weird The Dancing Plague Curtis Howe Springer Smoke ’Em if You Got ëEm A Titanic Case of Nausea Arsenic Paracelsus Honey Self-Experimentation Homeopathy The Doctor Is In Part IV: The Awesome The Poison Squad Bloodletting Death by Chocolate John Harvey Kellogg Parrot Fever Detox Vinegar Polio Vaccine The Doctor Is In

"Expanded Edition includes pandemics, plagues, and global panics."

USA Today bestselling author: After the war, a Confederate doctor returns to Texas—and fights to reclaim his life . . . Bestselling authors William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone give the classic American hero a real shot in the arm—in this epic story of a Rebel doctor fighting for justice in the aftermath of the Civil War . . . Vengeance with a scalpel On the blood-stained battlefields of a divided nation, Dr. Samuel Knight used his surgical skills to treat wounded Confederate soldiers. In the brutal prison camps of the Union Army, he offered his healing services to fellow captives who'd given up hope. But now, with the war over and the South in ruins, the good doctor faces his hardest challenge yet: to save himself . . . Penniless and hungry, Knight has to beg, borrow, and steal to survive in a post-war hell that used to be his country. By the time he reaches his home in East Texas, it's been taken over. Ruthless Union soldiers rule over the town with an iron fist. A Yankee carpetbagger is living in his old house—and the jackal has forced Knight's wife to marry him. A normal man might give up, but Dr. Samuel Knight is going to take back what belongs to him. With a heart full of grit, a hunger for revenge, and swift, surgical precision, he'll stick a bullet in every dead man walking . . .

Wrongfully accused of murder, Dr. Catherine Bennett is destined to hang... unless she can disappear. With the untamed territory of Colorado as her most likely refuge, she packs her physician's kit and heads West. But even with a new life and name, a female doctor with a bounty on her head can hide for only so long. Sawbones is the first novel in a gripping historical fiction series. "Packs a big punch with grit and raw passion....A GRAND SLAM OUT OF THE PARK." -RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!) 4.5 stars "Thoroughly original, smart and satisfying...perhaps a new subgenre: THE FEMINIST WESTERN." -Lone Star Literary Life "DAMN BRILLIANT and I absolutely loved it!" -Bibliosanctum (4.5 stars) "I COULDN'T TEAR MYSELF AWAY... An epic story of love and courage that sweeps from east to west, Sawbones will rip right through you." -Marci Jefferson "A PAGE-TURNER" -Jane Kirkpatrick, New York Times bestselling author "YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE with Catherine." -Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author

Sixteen-year-old Ezra McAdam has much to be thankful for: trained up as an apprentice by a well-regarded London surgeon, Ezra's knowledge of human anatomy and skill at the dissection table will secure him a trade for life. However, his world is turned on its head when a failed break-in at his master's house sets off a strange and disturbing series of events that involves grave robbing, body switching ... and murder.

On the eve of his retirement, Doctor "Sawbones" Hunter reflects on his career as a small-town physician. Introduction by Ken Mitchell.

"An all-out women-driven, queer, transgender, multiracial takeover of the Old West . . . and that's exactly what Melissa Lenhardt delivers in her unapologetically badass western, Heresy." - New York Times "Lenhardt has created a bold new story where women have taken their rightful place in the narrative of the Outlaw Western genre; where wit, wisdom and wiles could mean the difference between life and death, and where the fellowship of women bested every challenge." - Kathleen Kent Margaret Parker and Hattie LaCour never intended to turn outlaw. After being run off their ranch by a greedy cattleman, their family is left destitute. As women alone they have few choices: marriage, lying on their backs for money, or holding a gun. For Margaret and Hattie the choice is simple. With their small makeshift family, the gang pulls off a series of heists across the West. Though the newspapers refuse to give the female gang credit, their exploits don't go unnoticed. Pinkertons are on their trail, a rival male gang is determined to destroy them, and secrets among the group threaten to tear them apart. Now, Margaret and Hattie must find a way to protect their family, finish one last job, and avoid the hangman's noose. "Readers who relish an unusual narrative structure will enjoy this unique take on the traditional western." - Booklist For more from Melissa Lenhardt, check out: The Sawbones SeriesSawbonesBlood OathBadlands

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.