If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at how strange people used to be, brace yourself: they were even stranger than you imagined and Thomas Morris has the receipts…
In ‘The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine‘, Morris rummages through dusty 19th‑century medical journals and drags out a collection of true stories so bizarre they’d feel at home in a late‑night pub quiz or over brunch mimosas. Exploding teeth? Check. Patients who found themselves urinating through their noses? Sadly, yes. And let’s not forget the fellow who swallowed dozens of knives on a dare. Spoiler: it didn’t end well.
But what makes this book more than just a freak‑show scrapbook is Morris’s tone. Imagine your funniest friend telling you about the weirdest things they read on Wikipedia at 2 a.m. Equal parts horror, disbelief and dry British humour. You’ll wince and laugh out loud in equal measure.
Each chapter is short and snappy, the perfect size to read on the commute, in the bath, or while waiting for your takeaway. And Morris doesn’t just list the medical oddities; he gives you the context too: why people genuinely thought these treatments might work, what this says about society back then and how sometimes desperation and curiosity led to real breakthroughs – even if it looked absurd (or fatal) at the time.
It’s a book that’s equal parts morbid, hilarious and oddly comforting. Because behind all the mishaps, you see the same human impulses we have today: the urge to fix what’s broken, try something new, or at least have a wild story to tell afterwards.
So if you like your history served with a side of black humour and you’re not squeamish about bodily functions gone spectacularly wrong then this is the perfect pick. By the end, you’ll be both grateful for modern medicine and slightly nostalgic for the days when doctors kept detailed notes about patients who accidentally set themselves on fire…
hese are just a few of the anecdotal gems that have until now lain undiscovered in medical journals for centuries. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.
From seventeenth-century Holland to Tsarist Russia, from rural Canada to a whaler in the Pacific, many are monuments to human stupidity – such as the sailor who swallowed dozens of penknives to amuse his shipmates, or the chemistry student who in 1850 arrived at a hospital in New York with his penis trapped inside a bottle, having unwisely decided to relieve himself into a vessel containing highly reactive potassium...
