Quackery Audiobook By Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen cover art

Quackery

A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

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Quackery

By: Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
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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. This book seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

©2017 Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen (P)2018 Tantor History & Commentary Medicine & Health Care Industry Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Sciences Medicine Inspiring Middle Ages Africa Medical History

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Fascinating Medical History • Informative Content • Perfect Tone Delivery • Humorous Writing • Well-researched Facts
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The narrator was the perfect choice for this book. She made the subject matter so enjoyable.

Captivating

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easy to follow the narrator and interesting topic. Humerus ( hahaha ) and strangely cool.

wonderful

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Very interesting subject matter, thorough with some low brow humor that made me chuckle often

Interesting and Entertaining

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This had me both curious and amused at the same time. From electric baths, to balancing the four light colors. So much fun!

Cracked up

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I’ve been waiting to read this book for a while so I was super happy when audible got it, and I was not disappointed. This book is a fascinating blend of history, “science” and wit. I consider myself well read in medicine and medical history and though some stories I’ve heard before, I still learned about from this book! I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t, unless you majored in medical history.

Although the narrator was perfect, I found whatever they used to record her to sound a little too robotic. This distracts from how engaging the book is imo. It wasn’t as bad as other books as I still finished, but I still wish it sounded more human.

That being said, if the title peaks your interest I highly recommend this book as I doubt you’ll be disappointed. However, if you have the time to pick book vs audible, id recommend getting the book due to the slightly “robotic” narration. Or at least give the sample a go!

Fascinating

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Great listen ! a variety of topics of historical medicinal cures-- absolutely fascinating.... narrator does well and there are some quirky jokes and references.

Great listen and very interesting information

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Fantastic book and story about the history of some of the wackiest cures ever conceived by humans. Fascinating content organized very well, and in a manner that gives a very good rundown of the past and present status of each type of "cure," while not dwelling on irrelevant details. Only critique about the subject matter is the slight overuse of puns, which start out funny in the first few chapters, but tend to get old after awhile. Narrator performance is solid.

For only 3 easy payments of $49.99...

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Humour is a great thing in the right dose, but in this case just about every second sentence the authors insert some eyerolling-type aside, bad pun or catty remark. It eventually gets distracting to the story. But the material is interesting.

Interesting but would be better with less jokes

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I loved this audiobook SO MUCH when I first listened to it, and the millions of times I've subsequently pulled up a random chapter since. Tons of fun/weird historical information that had me literally gasping out of shock at least 2 times a chapter.

Each chapter holds up so well on its own that you can listen to them out of order and at any time, almost like a podcast.
In fact, every time I casually pull it out on road trips and have my friends/car passengers listen to it, they always ask "I really like this, whats the name of this podcast?" This book is perfect for converting podcasts listeners to the audiobook cult!

The most interesting, re-listenable book EVER

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I hope the sequel deals with current trends in food supplements, cleansing, purging and other carry-overs from the past

The Search Continues

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