A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities: A Compendium of the Odd, the Bizarre, and the Unexpected PDF

Rating: (11 reviews) Author: Visit Amazon's Jan Bondeson Page ISBN : 9780393318920 New from $13.17 Format: PDF

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Amazon.com Review

The history of medicine is a tale of human attempts to understand, explain, and predict the workings of nature. Sometimes those attempts can take strange turns, as Jan Bondeson shows in this diverting collection of medical oddments. A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities takes in matters such as stomach-dwelling snakes, not-unjustified fears of being buried alive, gigantism, lice-borne diseases, spontaneous combustion, and assorted monstrosities. Bondeson, a London-based medical researcher, combs out-of-the-way archives to populate his essays with strange case studies, among them the story of the California Indian Julia Pastrana, "a normal, intelligent woman of gentle disposition" who, owing to her unfortunate werewolf-like appearance, spent much of her life as a circus freak. Bondeson retells Pastrana's tragic tale, and many others, with sympathy and imagination. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA?This clutch of essays covers topics one is likely to see in supermarket tabloids: spontaneous combustion, premature burial, tailed people, and serpents living within the body. Bondeson presents these topics in their historical perspective, based on copious research and illustrated with archival drawings, and then explains the more likely cause for the phenomenon or belief. His dry wit makes for entertaining reading. The remaining essays describe some documented cases of human oddities?a giant, a two-headed boy, an extremely hairy and deformed woman, and a child no larger than a new-born infant?and illustrate the physical and emotional baggage carried by these unfortunate people. Notes for additional reading are provided for each chapter; there is no index. Thus, accessibility as a research tool will rely on detailed subject cataloguing, but the book is worth the effort because it provides teens with a source for accurate medical information about some unusual human conditions and ideas.?Carol DeAngelo, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393318923
• ISBN-13: 978-0393318920
• Product Dimensions: 0.7 x 5.8 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities: A Compendium of the Odd, the Bizarre, and the Unexpected PDF

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and even more recently), medical and natural history museums combined elements of science and folklore with an infatuation for the bizarre and grotesque. Thus, they were often likened to the old-time "cabinet of curiosities", displays of disparate and unusual artifacts which bore no relationship to one another. A visitor to these museums often saw things which, in later years, became the staple of carnival side shows.