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The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth
- And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine
- Narrated by: Thomas Morris, Ruper Farley
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
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Publisher's summary
"Delightfully horrifying." (Popular Science)
One of Mental Floss' Best Books of 2018
One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018
This wryly humorous collection of stories about bizarre medical treatments and cases offers a unique portrait of a bygone era in all its jaw-dropping weirdness.
A puzzling series of dental explosions beginning in the 19th century is just one of many strange tales that have long lain undiscovered in the pages of old medical journals. Award-winning medical historian Thomas Morris delivers one of the most remarkable, cringe-inducing collections of stories ever assembled.
Witness mysterious illnesses (such as the Rhode Island woman who peed through her nose), horrifying operations (1781: A French soldier in India operates on his own bladder stone), tall tales (like the "amphibious infant" of Chicago, a baby that could apparently swim underwater for half an hour), unfortunate predicaments (such as that of the boy who honked like a goose after inhaling a bird's larynx), and a plethora of other marvels.
Beyond a series of anecdotes, these painfully amusing stories reveal a great deal about the evolution of modern medicine. Some show the medical profession hopeless in the face of ailments that today would be quickly banished by modern drugs; but others are heartening tales of recovery against the odds, patients saved from death by the devotion or ingenuity of a conscientious doctor.
However embarrassing the ailment or ludicrous the treatment, every case in The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth tells us something about the knowledge (and ignorance) of an earlier age, along with the sheer resilience of human life.
Critic reviews
"A Ripley-esque collection of ‘compellingly disgusting, hilarious, or downright bizarre’ medical oddities...accompanied by the author's witty and often humorous, colloquial commentary." (Kirkus Reviews)
“In The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine, Thomas Morris takes a delightful romp through a myriad of entertaining, arcane and obscure medical anecdotes plucked from 18th- and 19th-century newspapers, journals and textbooks.... Using a panoply of colorful examples, the author artfully illustrates the frustrations, uncertainty, poorly founded confidence and frequent futility of medical practice in the prescientific age.” (Wall Street Journal)
"The vast amount of material from diverse sources will amuse readers and leave them shaking their heads...[an] informative, fascinating look at the history of medicine." (Library Journal)
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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.
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Computer-generated Narrator. Dated Humour.
- By Nemo on 12-28-18
By: Lydia Kang, and others
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Get Well Soon
- History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
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Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-09-17
By: Jennifer Wright
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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Blood and Guts
- A History of Surgery
- By: Richard Hollingham
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.
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I love this book!
- By Kristin on 08-25-19
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Heart
- A History
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As cardiologist and best-selling author Sandeep Jauhar tells in The Heart, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ.
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Fascinating Insight
- By Ironcharles on 10-27-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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The Great War and the Birth of Modern Medicine
- A History
- By: Thomas Helling MD
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Great War of 1914-1918 burst on the European scene with a brutality to mankind not yet witnessed by the civilized world. Modern warfare was no longer the stuff of chivalry and honor; it was a mutilative, deadly, and humbling exercise to wipe out the very presence of humanity. Suddenly, thousands upon thousands of maimed, beaten, and bleeding men surged into aid stations and hospitals with injuries unimaginable in their scope and destruction. Doctors scrambled to find some way to salvage not only life but limb.
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Interesting but weirdly sexist?
- By J-Murphy on 07-19-22
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The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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Birth
- The Surprising History of How We Are Born
- By: Tina Cassidy
- Narrated by: Angela Starling
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we're born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia, but that's about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why is it that every culture and generation seems to have its own ideas about the best way to give birth?
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important historical work, fascinating and fun
- By RT on 02-24-16
By: Tina Cassidy
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Birth Day
- A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth
- By: Mark Sloan MD
- Narrated by: Mark Sloan MD
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"I delivered twenty babies in the summer of 1977. I was hardly more than a baby myself, just turned 24 and starting my third year of medical school." So began Mark Sloan's three-decades-long exploration of the wonders and oddities of human childbirth. Pediatrician, husband, and father, the author has attended nearly 3000 births since that long-ago summer, encountering everything from routine deliveries to tense labor-room dramas.
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Great Book - Heavy on the History
- By Robert Ingalls on 03-16-17
By: Mark Sloan MD
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Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
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The Undead
- Organ Harvesting, The Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
- By: Dick Teresi
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear - and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.
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Eye opening
- By Amy Giglio on 07-01-18
By: Dick Teresi
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The Royal Art of Poison
- Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul
- By: Eleanor Herman
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions.
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Relieved and surprised
- By Amber on 09-28-18
By: Eleanor Herman
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The Chick and the Dead
- Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors
- By: Carla Valentine
- Narrated by: Beverley A. Crick
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Using the most common postmortem process as the backbone of the narrative, The Chick and the Dead takes the listener through the process of an autopsy while also describing the history and changing cultures of our relationship with the dead. The book is full of vivid insight into what happens to our bodies in the end. Each chapter considers an aspect of an autopsy alongside an aspect of Carla's own life and work and touches on some of the more controversial aspects of our feelings toward death.
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Dull
- By Leah on 08-19-17
By: Carla Valentine
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Final Exam
- A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality
- By: Pauline W. Chen
- Narrated by: Pauline W. Chen
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Pauline Chen began medical school 20 years ago, she dreamed of saving lives. What she did not count on was how much death would be a part of her work. Almost immediately, Chen found herself wrestling with medicine's most profound paradox: that a profession premised on caring for the ill also systematically depersonalizes dying. Final Exam follows Chen over the course of her education, training, and practice as she grapples at strikingly close range with the problem of mortality.
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Not just about end of life
- By Paul Mullen on 03-25-07
By: Pauline W. Chen
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The Heart Healers
- The Misfits, Mavericks, and Rebels Who Created the Greatest Medical Breakthrough of Our Lives
- By: James Forrester MD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At one time heart disease was a death sentence. By the middle of the 20th century, it was killing millions, and, as with the Black Death centuries before, physicians stood helpless. Visionaries, though, had begun to make strides earlier. On September 7, 1895, Ludwig Rehn successfully sutured the heart of a living man with a knife wound to the chest for the first time.
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Great review of the landmark achievements in Cardiology.
- By Trauma NP on 12-14-15
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The Invention of Surgery
- A History of Modern Medicine: From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution
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Yup, this is the one you’re looking for...
- By richard clark on 07-19-20
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Under the Knife
- A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations
- By: Arnold van de Laar, Andy Brown - translator
- Narrated by: Rich Keeble
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
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From the story of the desperate man from 17th-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room. What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell, or a bullet? And, as medical advances continuously push the boundaries of what medicine can cure, what are the limits of surgery?
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Why did a surgeon need a fast horse?
- By India Clamp on 10-18-18
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The Icepick Surgeon
- Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
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Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.
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FANTASTIC! & What’s up with all these naysayers (negative reviewers)?!
- By H. Zophie Leslea on 08-19-21
By: Sam Kean
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
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- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
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Quackery
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Computer-generated Narrator. Dated Humour.
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By: Lydia Kang, and others
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Patient Zero
- A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases
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From the masters of storytelling-meets-science, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors’ lively style, chapters include gripping medical stories about a particular disease or virus—smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV—that combine “Patient Zero” narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more.
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Can’t listen to the reader
- By Doug Clyde on 07-21-22
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The Invention of Surgery
- A History of Modern Medicine: From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution
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Written by an author with plenty of experience holding a scalpel, Dr. David Schneider's in-depth biography is an encompassing history of the practice that has leapt forward over the centuries from the dangerous guesswork of ancient Greek physicians through the world-changing implant revolution of the 20th century.
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Yup, this is the one you’re looking for...
- By richard clark on 07-19-20
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Under the Knife
- A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations
- By: Arnold van de Laar, Andy Brown - translator
- Narrated by: Rich Keeble
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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From the story of the desperate man from 17th-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room. What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell, or a bullet? And, as medical advances continuously push the boundaries of what medicine can cure, what are the limits of surgery?
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Why did a surgeon need a fast horse?
- By India Clamp on 10-18-18
By: Arnold van de Laar, and others
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The Icepick Surgeon
- Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
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Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.
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FANTASTIC! & What’s up with all these naysayers (negative reviewers)?!
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The Butchering Art
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Not one boring moment!
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Diagnosis
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As a Yale School of Medicine physician, the New York Times best-selling author of Every Patient Tells a Story, and an inspiration and adviser for the hit Fox TV drama, House, M.D., Lisa Sanders has seen it all. And yet, she is often confounded by the cases she describes in her column: unexpected collections of symptoms that she and other physicians struggle to diagnose. Dr. Sanders shows how making the right diagnosis requires expertise, painstaking procedure, and sometimes a little luck.
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Repetitive from her previous work
- By anon on 03-08-21
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The Violinist's Thumb
- And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
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From New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean come more incredible stories of science, history, language, and music, as told by our own DNA. There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it wasn't a tan) to Einstein's genius. They prove that Neanderthals and humans bred thousands of years more recently than any of us would feel comfortable thinking.
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I Need the Gene for Audiobook Selection
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-30-12
By: Sam Kean
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A Taste for Poison
- Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them
- By: Neil Bradbury Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals, and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin and tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads listeners on a fascinating tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive - or don’t.
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Poison, Murder, and So Much More!
- By Rebecca Hill on 02-12-22
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Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
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Overall
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Performance
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Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
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Feels like old school Discovery channel
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By: Erika Engelhaupt
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Blood and Guts
- A History of Surgery
- By: Richard Hollingham
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.
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I love this book!
- By Kristin on 08-25-19
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Hallucinations
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. Here Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.
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Not Just Hallucinations
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-05-13
By: Oliver Sacks
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Mortuary Confidential
- Undertakers Spill the Dirt
- By: Todd Harra, Kenneth McKenzie
- Narrated by: Susan Larkin, Allan Robertson
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From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell - and a special way of telling them. In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death's door.
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I laughed, I cried, and I even got a little spooked at the end.
- By Kari Delaney on 02-05-23
By: Todd Harra, and others
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Empire of the Scalpel
- The History of Surgery
- By: Ira Rutkow MD
- Narrated by: Gibson Frazier
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Despite passionate debates about health care and the media’s endless fascination with surgery, most of us have no idea how the first surgeons came to be because the story of surgery has never been fully told. Now, Empire of the Scalpel elegantly reveals surgery’s fascinating evolution from its early roots in ancient Egypt to its refinement in Europe and rise to scientific dominance in the United States.
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EXCELLENT FROM START TO FINISH.
- By Michael on 03-01-24
By: Ira Rutkow MD
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The Sawbones Book
- The Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern Medicine
- By: Justin McElroy, Dr. Sydnee McElroy
- Narrated by: Justin McElroy, Dr. Sydnee McElroy
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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.
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Close but no cigar . . .
- By Amanda Buffkin on 12-22-18
By: Justin McElroy, and others
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The Poisoner's Handbook
- Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
- By: Deborah Blum
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.
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Fascinating book marred by production errors
- By Reagan Kelly on 03-02-10
By: Deborah Blum
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Unnatural Causes
- By: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Narrated by: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?
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Boring!
- By Zoesmydog on 06-21-19
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Vital Organs
- By: Suzie Edge
- Narrated by: Suzie Edge
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The remarkable stories of the world's most famous body parts. All too often, historical figures feel distant and abstract; more myth and legend than real flesh and blood. These stories of bodies and its parts remind us that history's most-loved, and most-hated, were real breathing creatures who inhabited organs and limbs just like us - until they're cut off that is. Medical historian Dr Suzie Edge investigates over 40 cases of how we've used, abused, dug up, displayed, experimented on, and worshipped body parts.
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OMG!Love History
- By Kellie Mathieu on 01-23-24
By: Suzie Edge
What listeners say about The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nemo
- 01-30-20
Boring Toilet Humor
This is mostly classic British toilet humor, which can be amusing in very small doses, otherwise it is just boring. It is written as if the author scoured the internet for medical cases of genitals stuck in bottles, etc. or objects inserted in the rectum.
The humor, such as it is, is like being seated next to a bore at dinner who tells you nonstop puerile jokes, and when you don’t laugh, explains to you why they are funny. Fortunately, this an audio book, and not a dinner party, and you can shut it down immediately.
The narrator—the primary one being the author of the book— is adenoidal, monotone, and under the delusion he is something of a wit. He’s not. (See comment above about being stuck beside a boring dinner party guest.) Maybe if this had a better narrator it would be more palatable? I doubt it.
The additional narrator is ok.
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32 people found this helpful
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- WhittlessB
- 03-13-19
Vastly Entertaining
Quite an enjoyable listen of old medical transcripts highlighted by the witty commentary of the author. Great concept well delivered.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Daniel
- 12-31-18
Not what I was expecting
I was hoping for a variety of interesting strange and current set of medical oddity stories. The book is just medical stories from the Victorian era that at some point where kinda interesting, I guess. The best part of this was the narrator. I felt I had to force myself to finish this book.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Beth Swope
- 01-24-19
Funny and Informative
I was listening at work and caught myself cracking up multiple times. Strange wonderful tales of medicine gone wrong. I now have small talk for ages.
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10 people found this helpful
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- ScotDeerie
- 09-16-19
One of my favorite medicine-based books
I love the odd medical stories and this one has lots of them. It's very fascinating. I do a re-listen every once and a while just to enjoy it again. If medical oddities are your thing, you're going to enjoy it, too. It's not a technical read, just some odd stories gathered up from old medical journals and presented in a very interesting manner. They are often fascinating, horrifying, awesome and stunning by turn. You'll appreciate modern medicine a lot better after hearing some of these tales.
I found the two-person narration very well done, too. I really did thoroughly enjoy this book.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Amanda C
- 07-10-19
If you have a weak stomach, probably avoid this.
Otherwise, this is a very interesting book and reasonably well performed, considering that one of the performers isn’t an actor. Besides a strong stomach, it would also be helpful if you had an acquaintance with British humor and a sense of humor yourself. If you’re a student of medicine, medical history, or the Victorian era, this book is a gem.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Public Name#1234
- 04-29-19
interesting stories, mediocre narrator
Interesting stories made worse by the author inserting jokes and offhand comments in the middle of the narrative.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Marsha L. Woerner
- 01-10-20
I am SO glad that medicine has improved!
(As posted in GoodReads)
I could tell from the title that it was going to be humorous. The medicine discussed is from 100 and more years ago, and this results in humorously bad ideas, and frighteningly unsterile and painful techniques! People should have learned that the success of an individual technique did NOT necessarily imply the overall efficaciousness of said technique in all cases. I am so happy that science – and medicine – have improved greatly since then! It is still the case that sometimes doctors can say "I'm not sure WHY it works, but it does", but fortunately that attitude is not the ruling one in most cases. It is inconceivable that the idea of "the for humors" was popular as long as it was!
The litany of cases is truly interesting, and some of the successes go to show how resilient is the human body! Of course, the resilience of imagination is also pointed out :-)
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3 people found this helpful
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- mathew j.
- 02-23-19
Interesting but like a textbook
Interesting content but you can tell that these are from medical journals. Good for in the car if you're are not able to give 100% attention.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Elli
- 01-07-21
Craving deeper investigation
Fun quips but overall the book is lacking in depth of story. The exploding teeth stories especially deserve more investigation! I generally prefer long-form science journalism, but I would have liked an entire book based on any of these short reports.
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2 people found this helpful