Medicine’s Strangest Cases

A choice prescription of medical oddities, this collection of true tales features an Essex man who kept getting pregnant; the physician who gave syphilis its name by writing a poem about it; and the future Lady Hamilton's training as a courtesan through giving lectures on healthy living. We also meet 19th- and 20th-century doctors whose response to people having fun was to warn of danger—they condemned bicycling because it could stimulate the "sexual system" of "women of a certain temperament;" and protected young men from the dread disease of masturbation by blistering their penises with iodine. Laugh out loud and wince in sympathy with this insider's collection of the most bizarre medical cases in history.