The McElroys break down the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare, and introduce readers to some of the terrifying detours-- and dead ends-- along the way. While you may never even consider applying boiled weasel to your forehead (once the height of sophistication when it came to headache cures), you will almost certainly face some questionable medical advice in your everyday life. This rollicking journey through thousands of years of medical mishaps and miracles will help you be better able to figure out if it's a miracle cure or a scam.-- adapted from Amazon.com summary.

Part I: The unnerving. The resurrection men ; Opium ; An electrifying experience ; Weight loss ; Charcoal ; The Black Plague ; Pliny the Elder ; Erectile dysfunction ; Spontaneous combustion ; The doctor is in ; Trepanation -- Chapter II: The gross. Mummy medicine ; Mercury ; The guthole bromance ; A piece of your mind ; The unkillable Phineas Gage ; Phrenology ; The man who drank poop ; Robert Liston ; Urine luck! ; Radium ; Humorism ; The doctor is in ; The straight poop -- Chapter III: The weird. The Dancing Plague ; Curtis Howe Springer ; Smoke 'em if you got 'em ; A titanic case of nausea ; Arsenic ; Paracelsus ; Honey ; Self-experimentation ; Homeopathy ; The doctor is in -- Chapter IV: The awesome. The poison squad ; Bloodletting ; Death by chocolate ; John Harvey Kellogg ; Parrot fever ; Detox ; Vinegar ; Polio vaccine ; The doctor is in.