Honey, Mud, Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels

by Root-Bernstein, Robert; Root-Bernstein, Michele

• ISBN13: 9780395822982
• ISBN10: 039582298X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-09-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

This book covers remedies from ancient Egypt to the rain forests of contemporary Latin America, and challenges the myth that modern clinical practice is the only effective form of medicine. The authors find that modern research often reveals a rational basis for supposedly outdated ideas. Most important, an increasing number of physicians, pharmaceutical researchers, and scientists are beginning to recognize the wealth of knowledge that can be retrieved from abandoned practices of earlier eras in Western medicine and from outside the boundaries of Western ideas entirely.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Antique Modernities	1	(5)
1 Old Wives' Tales and the Clinic	6	(15)
2 A Flyblown Idea	21	(10)
3 Sweet Treat(ment)	31	(13)
4 The Baby in the Bath Water	44	(15)
5 Geopharmacy	59	(13)
6 A Bloody Good Remedy	72	(15)
7 Hirudo the Hero	87	(11)
8 Laudable Pus	98	(12)
9 Licking Infection	110	(9)
10 Urotherapy	119	(14)
11 Full Circle	133	(16)
12 A Contraceptive Misconception	149	(17)
13 Under Wraps	166	(14)
14 Unnatural Selection	180	(18)
15 Aping the Apes	198	(14)
16 Indigenous Healing	212	(15)
17 Crackpots and Panaceas	227	(18)
Conclusion: From Folk Wisdom to Pharmacopoeia	245	(14)
Selected Bibliography	259	(10)
Index	269